City Council - Government Operations Committee Hearing on Docket #1099

City Councilor, and I'm the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Government Operations. Today is October 8th, 2026, and the exact time is 10-01. In accordance with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025 Modifying Certain Requirements of the Open Meeting Law and relieving public bodies of certain requirements including the requirement that public bodies conduct its meeting in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. The City Council will be conducting this hearing virtually via Zoom. This hearing is being recorded. It is also being live streamed at boston.gov forward slash city dash council dash tv and broadcast on Xfinity channel 8, RCN channel 82, and Fios channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.go at boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing.

Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and we'll have two minutes to testify. If you wish to sign up for public testimony and have not done so, please email our central staff liaison Megan at meagan.c-o-r-u-g-e-d-o m-a rtin at boston.gov for the zoom link and it will be added to the list Today's hearing is on docket 1099, an ordinance to require quarterly revenue reports to be provided to the City Council. The matter was sponsored by Councillors Worrell, Culpepper and Mejia and was referred to the committee on May 29th, 2026. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councilor Worrell, Louijeune, Flynn and Culpepper. I will pass the mic over to Councilor Worrell and my colleagues if they choose to for any opening remarks. And then we'll get into today's panel,

administration panel, and then advocates. Although Councilor Worrell I may just defer to you to have everybody go all at once so just let me know what you're thinking if not that's fine we can just have budget director go first But for now, I'll pass it over to you for your opening remarks and just let me know on that point. But the floor is yours. Thank you.

Thank You Chair. And I'm okay with everyone going all at once. I want to thank everyone for being here. Panelists from the administration and then the experts around, you know looking at cities revenues and expenditures. And currently the city charter Calls for this council to receive quarterly expenditure reports. When I was Ways and Means Chair, we were asked for also quarterly revenue reports. And that's a practice that I would like to see codified. That's why I filed this ordinance which is a basic effort to require Transparency and provide the council and the public with information around revenue on a quarterly. And maybe, you know, I was thinking maybe this should also be monthly instead of quarterly.

This will allow the council to see city's revenue trends quarter over quarter in order to get a better sense of revenue projections for the upcoming fiscal year. and also just to see the trends, what's happening with whether it's hotel sales taxed in all the other revenue that we do collect. As of now, Structured, the process has been at the pleasure of whoever is away that means tears. But I want to protect against that and any administration's changes in the future to codify this practice more formally. I look at how the State Revenue Commission works and how there are monthly revenue reports that inform not only our budget projections for current and upcoming fiscal years, but again it can allow us for a reaction to an on-the-ground trend in revenue changes. Our permit fees down. Is the meal tax drop it? In what neighborhood?

And when we see those trends, the council, the city could take actions to try to correct them. So thank you everyone for joining in on this conversation. I do think this is a basic win-win with transparency and the power of data, and I'm hoping we can move forward with this ordinance by the end of the year.

Thank you, Councilor Worrell. Oh, I had to sneeze, sorry. Councilor Louijeune, you have the floor.

Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be with all of you. Thank you, Councilor Rao for the filing. Looking forward to hearing from the administration and from everyone on how we can move forward. Thank You. Thank

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do want to acknowledge Councilor Worrell, Councillor Culpepper and Councillor Mejia For bringing this forward, I believe this is a common sense exceptional recommendation on how we can Better be prepared for upcoming budget process, but also be prepared changes in revenue that will impact Basic City Services in the budget process as well. This shows residents that we're focused on fiscal stability of Boston It also ensures that we're providing financial oversight, that we are providing transparency, accountability and the positive leadership to Boston residents. So again, want to say thank you to my council colleagues for bringing this forward.

This is a common sense approach and I'd love to have it quarterly certainly Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Council Culpepper?

Good morning. Thank You, Madam chair for holding this hearing and I Thank Councilor Worrell for filing this ordinance amendment. I think it's critical during this past budget cycle, one of the questions everyone kept asking was what does the revenue outlook look like? What are we gonna have in terms of revenue while we were trying to prepare a budget. I think it's just common sense to be able to know What the revenue outlook looks like, what the revenue coming in looks like as we try and prepare a budget for next year. So hopefully we can get this budget Thank you for joining us.

as we try and put together a budget with the administration. So thank you, I think it's fitting. I think its appropriate. I Think it's timely. And I really think it is necessary If we're going to be better about how we put together a budget. If you remember this last budget cycle, we were all over the place trying to figure out And, you know, FIFA was coming in and we're looking at where are we going to be financially. So this will at least give us some information as we plot and plan to put together a budget. Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Culpepper. Just double checking to make sure I didn't miss anybody. Okay, we can go to our panelists. We'll go to a budget director first Jim Williamson for any opening remarks you have and then we'll go Steve. And then we've been joined by who we all know. And David, I apologize. I'm going to say your last name wrong if you'd like to correct me please do, Coulier from the Breschner Freedom of Information Project Director out of Florida. So if you want to just reiterate your affiliation when it's your turn, please do. But for now we'll go to James Williamson who is the Budget Director of the City of Boston. Jim, you have the floor.

Great. Thank you Chair Coletta Zapata and I'll sponsor Councilor Worrell and other counselors on the call. We really appreciate this opportunity to talk about The budget and how we communicate the budget and interact with the City Council. So just a quick recap, my name is Jim Williamson I'm the Budget Director here at the City of Austin and sort of the fundamentals of public budgeting are, we want to ensure fiscal balance and sustainability. The annual operating budget is supported by the general fund and it must remain balanced and fully supported by predictable recurring revenue sources. We, like most government budgets have a public purpose doctrine. The operating expenditures funded through the public taxation must be strictly served a demonstrable public purpose And then sort of keying on the purpose of this hearing is transparency and governance.

Proactive ongoing public communication of municipal budget information is essential to fostering fiscal transparency and public accountability We take pride in the fact that we have many examples of, we have a full volume thousand page document online. Now, that is validated by a third party sort of organization as We have an interactive website with the full support of our IT department. Manipulate that data on their own. We have regular council communications both through public hearings like this one and there are instances where

written communication or reports filed with city clerk that are delivered. And as the budget office is part of the larger Finance Cabinet. We participate in annual information statements that accompany bond issuances, The Auditing Department is the lead on this. OBM does participate in the annual audited financial statements and through rating agency communications which are often the rating agencies are an assessment of the city's fiscal stewardship of their annual operating budget and It's management of its five-year capital plan. So with that, happy to entertain any questions and go from there.

Thank you, Jim. Next we'll go to Steve Poftak who's the Chief Executive Officer of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. Go ahead, Steve.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Also in addition to being the president of the Boston Musical Research Bureau I'm a Resident of Roslindale, District 5. And you can catch me on the 35 bus in the orange line most mornings and afternoons if folks have any questions. It's my pleasure, and thank you to the panel for the invitation. It is my pleasure to offer the Research Bureau qualified support for the proposed ordinance We took a look at it, our support rests on three central tenets. One is a bias for transparency and disclosure evidence that this is best practice and as well as the importance of providing updated data to the council, particularly during low growth periods. I would say in general, we are supportive of additional transparency and this is clearly part of that.

Obviously if transparency exposes any proprietary or protected information that's gone too far In this case, we think it's reasonable what is being requested. This is something that Many public entities already do this. We believe it's feasible, I believe the Office of Budget Management is already doing this on a monthly basis for their own internal purposes so we're not asking them to do something That they are incapable of doing. In fact, they're quite capable and I'll talk about that in a second. And there's nothing proprietary or protected, I believe. And if there was, I think it would be on a very minute or case by case basis and could be dealt with I just had the pleasure of moderating a panel with the primary analyst for the City of Boston, from Moody's. And Moody's actually commends the Office of Budget Management for their favorable transparency and disclosure.

It's one of the fundamental elements that underpins our AAA bond rating. And I think this move only strengthens that. It adds to that strong foundation that I give credit to Jim Williamson and the whole team for building It also, I think... It's important that we move to formalizing this as opposed to having it being an informal practice. There's a real asymmetry in how we deal with expenditures and revenues right now, and it's not just the city of Boston. The state still has some All of these aspects where one is required either under charter or statutory and the other is an informal practice. I believe the Office of Budget Management has been responsive to requests in the past, so I think I want to recognize that.

But I also think, although it may not feel like this every day, Jim, you may not be budget director forever and we can't depend on your confidence in goodwill in this position. always existing. I think it makes more sense that we formalize the practice and resolve this asymmetry between how we treat expenditures and how we create revenues I also note that the Division of Local Services calls revenue monitoring highly recommended. I'll submit my testimony immediately afterwards. Many of our peer cities, I only took a look at six All six of the peer cities that I looked at, New York, Philly, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, LA. They all disclose at least on a quarterly basis I would say the majority of them disclose on a monthly basis. I've included links in my testimony if you want to take a look at their documents, to get a sense of what they do. This strikes me as best practice

Lastly, in a period of uncertain revenue growth where the council is being asked potentially to pass supplemental appropriations, we think it's appropriate that they get up-to-date revenue information as well. Three quick qualifications and then I'll close. The docket restates that it is the administration's responsibility to project revenues, we believe that should remain We believe that the Office of Budget Management's conservative approach to projecting revenues is a strength, not a shortcoming. And we encourage the continuation of that practice We also think while monitoring in-year trends is important, we should note that certain trends are impacted by seasonality and are subject to change. So this shouldn't be a forum to identify possible surpluses in-year. It really should be an exercise and understanding where revenue is going.

So I close by again offering my thanks for the ability to contribute to this discussion and to restate the Research Bureau's qualified support for the proposed ordinance. Thank you.

Thank You, Steve. David? And the floor is yours.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Dave Coulier. I am director of the Breckner Freedom Reformation Project at the University of Florida. I've conducted research nationally We've been working on transparency, particularly at the state and local level for about 25 years. And the Brechner Center has been around almost 50 years doing research in education. I'm not here really to speak specifically to your ordinance proposal, but provide some context national context that you might want to consider. First, kind of big picture. I think what Mr. Poftak said is absolutely right. There's research that shows it when municipalities are transparent particularly with their finances It actually lowers their bond amounts. They actually save money, and taxpayers save money. We find that transparency practices can reduce corruption

Make agencies more efficient. It makes sense. One study showed that for every dollar spent on Public Records Transparency Society Benefits $287. That's more efficient government, saved lives, all sorts of benefits to society. We know that transparency practices increases the trust of the public in institutions. So this is about Bostonians trusting the city more. When financial information is posted by municipalities services tend to improve and increase. because agencies feel that pressure. And I might add, there's one study that says Municipalities led by female mayors are the most transparent, so that might be of interest in Boston.

and other research that I've included in a written testimony. Regarding context with Boston, Kudos to the Boston City Council for last year passing a resolution in supporting Sunshine Week, transparency, government transparency. So obviously there's an interest in Boston and serving the public openly, and that's great. I do have to say again this is not to bag on Boston or Massachusetts but Our research shows that it has been trickier in Massachusetts and Boston. The data indicate Compliance with public records requests is actually fairly low in Boston and Massachusetts. Massachusetts ranks 31st in the country when it comes to government transparency,

Over a number of studies, 16 studies done over the past several decades and I included that in the handout as well. It's just context. I'm not putting you down. Florida is just as bad, just to be fair. Florida ranks 31st. So there's a lot that can be done to improve things. In fact, I also included other studies that compare large cities in their financial transparency practices. Boston does not rate high on those rates at the very bottom. And so there's room for improvement. In fact, quarterly financial reports to the City Council is not enough. Most large cities do far more than that and that means providing public the information on the website proactively.

Easy to see, easy to sort through. Many, many cities are doing that and have for a long time. And I would encourage the city to consider doing even more. Thank you for watching. generated monthly and so it may not cause any extra expense. Might as well shine a light, let the whole public see it, not just even the city council It's standard practice, I think, and best practice of cities. And so I hope you have a chance to kind of go through some of that Happy to answer questions if you have any, but I'm encouraged that you're talking about this. So kudos. Thank you.

Thank you, Dave. I'll now pass it to my colleagues for their questions. Councilor Worrell and then I'll start with the lead sponsors and then go to Councillor Culpepper in just acknowledging we've been joined by Councillor Ben Weber.

Thank you, Chair. And are we asking questions to the whole panel? The whole panel, okay.

Yeah, go ahead.

Awesome. Yeah definitely want to thank Director Williamson and the whole team over there with their work on creating a more transparent process and when I and then just making sure that they give us all the information as a counselor, as we ask. And again this is more so just formalizing these efforts inside of law knowing that administrations can change. My question, Jim is currently and I think I've heard this a couple of times already. Are you reviewing projections on a monthly basis revenue

We do take a snapshot on a month-to-month basis for revenues and expenses. More in departments also get through the financial system, an automated status report of their budget status. I think the city council even gets that probably that same report where it gives them sort of like how a budget to actual information purchase orders that are open, requisitions that are in process. The status of payrolls that have been posted and if the department actually is involved in the collection of certain revenue items, that's also included. And we do that and in concert with communication with departments

mostly with the eye towards managing it, so through the ongoing business processes of executing on a budget. departments are requesting to fill vacant positions or we were reviewing Purchases and RFPs that are being requested throughout the fiscal year. And this data is used to inform how we're doing, First to validate, is this activity initially contemplated within this budget? To make sure that it wasn't. There has some flexibility to do things We're in the budget that have to happen. You know, we all have emergencies where something has to be repaired or something like that but

but generally, the larger consistent things are things that should be contemplated in the budget and we should be aware of. So that's the relationship We have, we're looking at the budget. We're making sure that activity fits within that budget and fits within where we think and so on. So we're sort of thinking about how it'll fit within the budget, recasting where they might be at June 30 every year. And it ebbs and flows in I think Mr. Poftak referred to seasonality of things, those are all things that we need to consider like is it an activity that happens in the fall, winter time and we all experienced the weather that we endured last winter and the need to then go get a budget supplemental to deal with it. I think we were not uncommon, Massachusetts municipalities were in the same boat.

In fact, the state took a step to even try to mitigate that through some of the fair share money that they had to mitigate some of those costs So we do that. In terms of reporting the data, we actually work with our honoring department to actually get I would defer to them. You know, some operational reconciliation and at least a managerial review to make sure it's accurate, not missing something. So it's not like an instantaneous turnaround. You want to have And then in terms of turning that data over to the council,

Would there be any additional burden or anything that you can see on your side You know, slow or make it harder for you to turn in information.

It's just building in a time for that to making sure we're reconciling it to make sure it's an accurate because the data exists, but sometimes how you query it can make all the difference in the world like the parameters for the query and if it excludes something or we want to make sure that's All right, and then the ideal cadence.

I know that the ordinance calls for quarterly. We heard from Mr. Poftak that majority of our peer cities, they do it monthly. What would be a cadence that you would feel comfortable with?

You know, it's particularly as you start the fiscal year. Some of our even our projection models are built off of a certain amount of run rates so the first quarter is very like there isn't too much Thank you for joining us. to react and introduce, have awareness also to get to inform the upcoming budget as well. Awesome.

And then Steve? My question to you is how would making this information More easily accessible help you in the work that the Boston Municipal Research Bureau does to help inform city and policy makers.

I think having additional insight into how revenue is coming in, and I fully accept Jim's caveats about you know particularly some of the early months may not be, don't pull the fire alarm because the first month's revenues aren't looking right. But I do think in general having more insight, also being able to identify trends. Are we light in certain areas? Are we over collecting other areas? allows us to A, identify in some cases and the Budget Management Office does a fine job of this but in some case you identify hey there might actually be a problem and many more. Or perhaps if they're above, I don't want to be the voice of doom and gloom here.

If they're about you know those are also a set of interesting questions to ask so I think the additional transparency would obviously be helpful to our work

Right. No, and I completely agree with both what you and Jim are saying around the seasonality but i think as we collect more years uh we can start to understand those trends in those David, my question to you is The city could be doing more than just doing this quarterly, reporting revenue quarterly. Do you have any other examples that you can share on Other cities, other peer cities on how they're being more transparent around revenue or what they're doing.

Well, that's a great question. And I think Mr. Poftak offered up some cities that he's looked at closely maybe similar ones that always pop up Seattle San Francisco, Houston others that have taken a lead on this over the years. So I think there's no need to reinvent the wheel, right? And I think... and I'm sure Mr. Williamson is aware of a lot of this as well, you know? And maybe look there's already been Various proactive posting of financial information, which is great. So yeah I wouldn't hurt to take a look and see what's feasible and possible for proactive posting for everybody At least monthly, I think makes sense.

And it could help the city council but also what we find in the research is Just having that information out there for anybody to see causes us government employees, I'm one as well. To be a little more on top of things with our finances, our spending and our revenue. We work harder because we know we're being watched It will likely have that spinoff effect for the city of Boston long term. And I think that's a good thing for everyone.

Thank you, Chair. I have no further questions.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Culpepper, I just want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Councilor Fitzgerald and Councilor Mejia.

Go ahead, Councilor. Thank you. I had a couple of questions for David David, you talked about the record requests and how we were at the bottom. I think you said 32nd? In terms of the country with regard to transparency, what recommendations do you have to help us be better at retrieving and receiving record requests. And I'm assuming you're talking about FOIA,

That's a great question, Councilor. Yeah we study kind of the elements that lead governments to be a little more transparent with their constituency One thing is independent enforcement. And so Connecticut is the nation's model on that. They actually have an independent commission Thank you for joining us. There are structures in place in parts of the country that work very well. In fact, throughout the world more than 50 countries have such systems. Ohio has a and many more.

That are heavily blue or heavily red tend to have lower transparency. When there's more purplish friction between parties, Then we see more efforts to be transparent. So it doesn't surprise me that Massachusetts as a whole tends to rank low on these transparency studies. because of that makeup. But there are a lot of things that y'all could do and at the city level to make things better, and I think the people will probably appreciate that. And the government won't be better off for it

Hey, David, can you at some point when you get a chance, give us some of that information? We're going to look at Connecticut's commission, the independent commission. I think that's a great Thank you for joining us. and you don't get too far once they get to the court. So yeah, we could look at that a little closer It would be really helpful.

Absolutely. Oh, and I might add, sorry, Councilor.

No, go on.

I actually have a project, a grant-funded project to send the Connecticut, FOI Commission people around the country to do talks and explain what they do. If you'd like that in Boston, happy to do that. And the document I forwarded for the record Thank you for watching. Last week showed that these commissions on average only cost 31 cents per person, per year, per capita. They're a great deal. They handle appeals at a cost of about $2,300 per appeal which you'd think wow that seems like a lot But that's a lot cheaper than a lawsuit. So we can avoid a lot of wasteful litigation by these alternative methods that work very well.

And so does the Independent Commission that you're talking about now, they get it before it goes to court. And then if they can't resolve it, then the parties end up litigating.

Right. And they educate, so that solves a lot of problems right there. Educating requesters, educating government custodians. They do a lot to make the system streamlined and work a lot more efficiently saves everybody money, the requester and the government.

And you mentioned that it reduces corruption, services improve and increase, and the trust of government increases. Is that in the material that you submitted?

It is. I included links to those studies as well, and I just provided a snapshot of some example of studies. There have been hundreds and hundreds of these studies done over the decades, and those are some of the ones I like best.

Thank you. Steve, good seeing you again. Good hearing from you.

Thank you, Councilor. Pleasure to be here.

Good, good. Hey Steve as we move forward how can you be more helpful in terms of moving this ordinance amendment forward?

Well I've I've offered my support with some thoughts attached to them. Happy to be a resource in terms of How other places are handling this and also interpreting any information about how the state handles this as well. So please view me As a resource going forward, if you have any questions. I've submitted my testimony which has links to those. Very unscientific selection of major cities and just took a look at what they did. But again, happy to talk you through those as needed.

Did you look at the independent commission in Connecticut?

I did not. Yeah, this is a bit of learning for me. I didn't really approach this from an open records point of view. I approached it more from a revenue reporting.

Okay, great. Thank you, Steve. And I had a final question for Jim. Jim, good to see you again. Good to see Hey, Jim. You mentioned that the council gets its month-to-month report that all departments get?

Um... As a department, City Council as a department probably gets. To be honest with you, every department gets their own individual report. They get their own, right. It's a system-generated report that gives a snapshot of budgets to actuals. But we don't get the other reports. We only get the council report.

We don't

Yeah, it's mostly for departmental management issues like to know what requisitions you have, outstanding purchase orders, things like that.

How difficult would it be, Jim, for the council to get the reports that all the other departments get?

I you know that's sort of it comes from auditing. I would have to connect with them on that.

Can you check with them and get back to us? Sure, sure. And on the Report that Councilor Worrell is seeking on a quarterly basis. How challenging or how difficult is that going to be to provide to the council on a weekly basis? And he's talking about revenue,

Right. Yeah, I believe we've been doing a councilor at request so that's... We will continue to do that So it takes a little time, just staff time to sort of check it and make sure that it's accurate. But other than that we'll continue to provide that.

And so if we haven't been requesting it, then you haven't providing it? Correct. But I think you've been pretty consistently requesting it. On a quarterly basis or on a month-to-month basis?

I think on a quarterly basis.

Okay, and so this is just really instituting this institutionally and legally so that we don't have to request it that it comes automatically.

Yeah, I would assume that's what the intent is.

Okay, and since you're doing it anyway, there really shouldn't be any Extra work if you're doing it as we requested, other than this will be on a scheduled basis. Right. Okay, okay. Jim, thank you so much. Good seeing you.

Thank you, Councillor Culpepper. We'll go to Councillor Flynn.

Thank you Madam Chair and thank you to David and to Jim and to Steve for informative testimony. So let me start with Jim. Jim, the reports that could be given to the city council on a quarterly basis. Would that include purchasing issues, contracts that were signed or went out or paid? General information such as that?

No, it would be strictly budgetary information. But I believe there are on the city's open data portal Things that are like open checkbook that show that kind of transactional activity.

Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud Jim when we saw that Inspector General report from the state on $900,000 misappropriation funds at the public school department. Could that have been caught? on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis knowing that there's some financial misappropriation of money. But could any report have caught that If someone looked at it on a monthly basis and said, hmm this doesn't look all that right. This doesn't good on a quarterly basis there's something wrong here instead of having it I have not been directly involved in that interaction with the IG's office, but

Potentially, reports could flag things but maybe not. I'm not close enough to it to give you an informed response

All right, let me ask Steve basically that same question. Could that type of information if city councils know about it or the mayor's office knew about it on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis. Not just someone at the public school department but could that have prevented misappropriation of money?

Again, I'm not having sort of done the legwork myself. I hesitate to give you an absolute response. It has an extraordinary amount of information if you know what to ask it. However, it contains transactions not the substance of the contract that underpins that transaction and I think the crux of the IG's discussion in their report is that the contract was sole source and that the shipping fees were kind of the issue in question here. Those are not dealt with, Open Checkbook is a gigantic spreadsheet of data So you'd see the transaction that a vendor was paid, and you could then total up how much the vendor was paying. But you would have to have an understanding of the contract

as well, which again is not there. So I'm giving you kind of a hand waving answer and I apologize for that but it's not There would be some evidence there, and clearly the transactions would be captured there. But some of the issues that the IG has pointed to are separate from what would be in open checkbook. And that's not open checkbooks fault. Open checkbook is a, you know I think it's a wonderful bit of transparency from the administration but there's separate issues there.

Yeah, OK. My main point to Jim and to Steve is how could we have prevented this almost immediately when we saw something That's my main point. Let me go on to David. Freedom of information from residents is a critical part of transparency. We have something on the City Council called It's similar to that. It's basically called a 17F, it's a request for information from the city council to the mayor's office or the city administration to request certain information We have a strong mayoral system here in weak city council, so the mayor can just ignore the city council.

Are there other cities that have something similar to a 17F request for information from city council to the mayor? and that is respected, that the mayor turns that information over to the city council because it does help them prepare for budget meetings or for upcoming hearings.

Well, that's a great question Mr. Flynn. To be honest I don't know, I haven't studied that so it would be a great study to look at the dynamics. It sounds like I'm sorry, I don't have an answer to that. But that's... Something really to look at closely because it sounds a wee dysfunctional if you ask me. Information should flow freely to the public and to the city council.

Regardless if it's controversial or regardless if it supports the administration or opposes the administration, the data shouldn't matter. Is that accurate, David?

Oh absolutely. I think any information that is publicly disclosable the City Council's entitled to and Unless there's some exemption in the state law that might allow some redactions, and of course city council members should be entitled to it just as everyone else should be.

We take the position that if it's going to put the administration in a bad light, You know, the city council should not get that information or should not request it even. Hmm.

Well... We're talking about annual revenue reports or sorry quarterly revenue reports by the way.

I understand, Madam Chair.

Okay. That's a subject matter at hand right now.

Madam Chair, I understand.

Okay, just making sure. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank You, Madam chair for highlighting that but Do you want me to stop my questioning, Madam Chair? Is that what you're asking me?

Oh no. I mean we're on to where we're talking about an ordinance ensuring quarterly revenue reports and so it's separate from a 17 .

Madam Chair, I understand that. Okay. I'm just somewhat surprised that I was cut off but I'm gonna... I'll stop asking questions if that's what you want, Madam Chair.

You are more than happy to ask one or two more questions. Everyone's been getting at least eight minutes and so you're almost at that time. So if you'd like another question, to ask another question please go ahead.

No, Madam Chair. I was the only one that was cut off so I'm just going to stop there.

Okay. That is your prerogative. Thank you so much. We'll be going to Councilor Weber next.

Hello, can you hear me? Maybe.

We can hear you, yep.

Great. Okay so I guess for Jim Again, so how long after the end of the quarter would it take to generate the report? You may have said this. I missed your opening comments. I apologize.

You know, I think the ordinance calls for 30 days and I think that's a generous amount of time for us to be able to do it. Hopefully we can do it before that.

Okay. And then I guess what's your opinion on I mean, just posting like the report in a public... Instead of just sending it over to the city council. I don't know if that's what's contemplated but you know, what are your thoughts on producing a report or just posting it?

Yeah, I mean, sort of delving into the world of IT a little bit. So they're sort of the custodian and manager The open data portal, we definitely stage data there but it takes a lot of work coordinating with them on like the protocols and then they have a process. So I don't want to speak for them, Thank you for joining us. But I don't think the Budget Office could use that to really do it. We'd have to work with our IT folks to stage publicly displayed data. Same thing we do with budget information, so we have that relationship now We have interactive budget data, analyze Boston budget data.

That's been a lot of work over many years to get that protocol worked out.

Okay, and then I'm just in the suggestive language says reports detailing all revenue collected. To date by item, do you need any more direction than that? I think you understand what we want. Can you just explain what that would be?

So it's something that's produced Thank you for joining us. It's an estimate of revenue that we will collect that is sufficient to support our expenditure budget. We don't change it frequently, We establish it and the only opportunity we typically have to revise it is through when we work with the Department of Revenue to validate our They sort of do this 351 cities and towns. We want to make sure we're doing the due diligence to make this municipality is following all of state guidelines in terms of revenue reporting.

And we have to take a little bit of a step back and realize that 73% of our revenue comes from property tax and it's very formulaic in its calculation. and not to discount, there's an enormous amount of work in reporting that happens in the lead up to actually with City Councils participation in classification You know, So that's a pause point where we can say, hey this revenue is not achieving its level. We'll revise it down or New Growth did better than we had originally estimated. Capture that, yeah.

Yeah Joe I think my question is a little more basic than that it's just in terms of so if you're listing them by item Like what was your reading of the word item? And is that, I wanna make sure we're gonna get what we're hoping for.

Yep, it's the way we record it. It's by kind of revenue account We tend to bucket it in our budget summary. So we say this is property tax, these are excise tax, These are permits, and then we have our state aid accounts. You know, you guys have seen this presentation before. You know 73% of our revenues property tax all those component pieces are smaller slices of the pie And you say that covers the work, just the word item will cover

will cover it. Your directions are clear, you feel?

I think so, yeah. I think we're all on the same page about what it should be.

Okay, and then I guess Steve, and this is going to come back to you Jim, but Steve and I were talking this morning about revenue projections. And I think other municipalities have longer, they have more data in terms of where the people are provided with longer revenue projections. Steve, do you want to say anything about that and something we can improve going forward?

Yeah, I think the conversation some people noted other communities have a practice of doing longer term both revenue and expenditure projections. And that's a virtuous exercise. I would direct this one probably back to Jim. I know, I believe the city does some form of this I just off the top of my head, I can't figure out what vessel sort of what is the distribution channel for it. But I know that is something that the office thinks about. I don't know the level of disclosure, so I might sort of bunt on that one a bit.

So Jim, can we get longer term projections? Why don't we do... Do you have them internally? Why aren't we provided with There may be good reasons for this and I'm just interested in your thoughts.

We do, so if you go to the budget office website budget.boston.gov and then you go to PDFs, get the PDF section there is a multi-year budget display so in our most The current publication, we do a forecast for FY28 and 29. And it is to statements made earlier That is one of the fundamental questions we get from rating agencies. It's not really necessarily, and that speaks to the whole Sustainability. Are the decisions you're making today preparing yourself to deal with things in the future?

Jim, so I think that issue from the rating agencies is also partially, we only project two years whereas in other places they project longer. I just don't know if those projections are just not reliable? Have you had a conversation about doing longer projections

Yeah, you know the further you get out the more it becomes There's less accuracy there, probably. But actually we're following the criterion set by The Government Finance Officers Association that suggests at least a two-year forecast. So, that's what we're doing.

Last question, I guess is this issue of the revenue. So let's say it's May 2026 We've gotten quarterly reports, maybe three quarterly reports or two for FY26. And we're sort of using those projections to see where we're going to end up At the end of fiscal year 26, but we don't have the full picture. Like so I mean in your experience like how much does that last quarterly report you know sort To follow, is this a straight? You know we're seeing like the straight line or does it look like You know, the Alps. I have no idea because I think that's an issue that we deal with each year is like well What's going to be happening in May and June into 7th of April?

We just don't have that data on how that impacts. I guess what's your...

Yeah, I think there's some uniqueness across the revenue sources on the timing of when they're recognized. So some of it is like licensing things. There's a certain We also are distributions from the Commonwealth for excises or on a certain cadence. So there are some differences,

and then just I guess the follow-up is so but the cadences are similar each year it'll be predictable on some of these like licensing they'll say yeah well usually even though we're only 75 percent of the way through the year We're probably only seeing 25% of the revenue from this, and I would object that from year to year.

And how uneven it's going to get? Yeah, and there are some signaling of certain things. The state will publish what they call blue book data on excise collections and We can, so it's not distributed to us on that frequency. I think it's distributed to US on a quarterly basis but at least we could like do some analysis to say historically the City of Boston would capture X percentage of that. But it doesn't always, doesn't always manifest itself based on a historical pattern every single time. There is some variability there, so... And then do you have that?

Could you actually go through and, I mean do you have a sense of what that is in here? Thank you Chair. Thank you Councillor Webber.

Councillor Mejia?

Sorry, I'm on mute. Good morning. I thought it was gonna be Councilor Fitzgerald but I'm happy to be here and I wanna thank everyone who has shown up to talk about all things that we need Thank you, Councilor Worrell for your leadership in this space and the chair for facilitating. Just a few questions for me, Jim and I'm sure you know, and Steve, Dave, I'm not sure if we've met but I know that Steve and Jim For those who have been following Boston politics knows that I worked on establishing, at least initially was municipal inspector general here in the city of Boston just so that we can add some more fiscal oversight. It did not turn out to be such.

Now we're just strengthening the FinCom's abilities to have some more power so that there could be some of that work. and I'm really excited about having an extra layer of accountability and more oversight as it relates to our budget. But my question is to follow up on Councilor Culpepper, Jim, he had mentioned that you all are able to share with the department's budgets I guess or just kind of like giving them updates. regularly. So if you can get it to them, what would be the barrier of getting it to us? If it's already created, is just a matter of sending 8 to 13 other individuals. What's the problem with getting it to us if you already get it to the departments?

I don't think there'll be a problem responding to what's put forth in the ordinance. So it shouldn't be a problems. Monthly is just at different cadence, A lot of the communications with The department is sort of like working conversations, so it's to identify issues that may have arose operationally particularly connected to revenue. There are both external factors that influence revenue, but internal operational things. So parking tickets are issued by sick employees so Staffing levels are connected to that. So those are all, it's sort of a working communication so we tend to and many more. Thank you.

I get it. Even if you manage our expectations and say, hey, this is just a... Don't hold us accountable to every single cent that's here but this is kind of what the projections are looking like out of just More for communications purposes, but I'm going to move on some very specific questions now. The adopted FY26 budget included $4.7983 billion in reoccurring... I don't even know how to say that number, that's how far I grew up. 40, I think it's four... It's a lot, it's a billion in reoccurring revenue divided into 13 categories What was the actual total amount of reoccurring revenue for FY26? And what are the actual totals in each of those categories? So if you can just, I'm gonna give you all my questions and then you can answer them. What was the total actual revenue in the first quarter for FY27?

And what is the breakdown of that revenue by category? The FY27 adopted budget included 4.9024 billion in reoccurring revenue were those projections Were there projections of how much total revenue, by revenue and by category will come in each month or quarter? So just trying to get a handle on that. And how do they compare with the actual revenue And then what is the data about how the World Cup impacted revenue compared to the original projections? Because we were told, oh, there's not going to be a lot. We don't want to count on that. That's why we're going to cut youth jobs. But anyways, I'd like to know What would it look like now that we have those dollars in? And when more revenue comes in than expected, what happens to that money?

that they go into the general funds and reserves. Can the mayor and the city council pass a supplemental budget with additional funds just to help us understand kinda like what we do with the overflow? and last year the administration claimed that any resubmitted budget might have less revenue than the budget submitted in April. And has that revenue actually been below what was included in the adopted budget. And now I understand before the chair says, this is a hearing on the ordinance but I do believe these questions help gain some insight to your ability to track and report and share information with the council. So this is a good first try. So we'd love to hear it. and those are all for you Jim, unfortunately David. And Steve I'll come to you if there's a second round.

No problem Councilor, I will do my best to sort of... I think you first started talking about FY26, which we had some budgetary challenges in FY26 and we worked collaboratively with the council. I think it was a I was a good sort of testament to the collaborative working relationship between the administration and the council. There were many communications Mayor, and the CFO to the City Council on status trying to keep the council abreast of the situation we were dealing with in FY26. We actually successfully worked with the council to do supplemental budgets for both the Boston Public Schools and the city.

The city largely driven by some significant snowfall that resulted in shortfalls in that budget. you know we were not unlike a lot of but in terms of giving you this specificity on the finalization of FY 26 budget. This is a point where it then switches from the Budget Office to the Auditing Department and giving the auditing department its space to do its standard annual audit process. And this audit process involves sort of those routine closeout adjustments, you know, adjusting revenue accruals, grant reconciliations. And so they're in the height of that. So it would be premature for me to like give you any definitive

The only directional thing I can say is we certainly do appreciate the supplemental that was approved by, supplementals that were approved by City Council and we do believe that we finished Foy 26, without a bottom line deficit based on that. So we appreciate that in terms of The first quarter of FY27, it literally just closed last week. We're still sort of working through it. I think you are not unlike the rest of other folks to want to see what we Continue to refer to as sort of the World Cup bump. Are we seeing extraordinary revenues? And this is an example of where we're seeing like... Some of the data that sort of doesn't exactly, and we have partners with this.

The planning research department has done some analysis on the economic impact of major events like World Cup. But there are so many components to it, I don't think we're ready to give you sort of a definitive, but I think we can say generally The quarter where World Cup happened in the run up to 4th of July and then into the SAIL Boston event. have better revenue in hotel exercises and meals, but if it is... I think it would be premature for me to say that it's sort of an outsized Because as we all know, Boston is a very desirable place to come to in the spring. Anyway, there's a fair amount of predictable things with college graduations and the things that are filling those

We don't want to ascribe too much We're still analyzing that data, and the 26th data is still sort of under an audit process at the moment.

You know what, Jim? I feel...I don't know. This is what happens when we're—and I don't share how much time I have left but this is where I feel like you understand I don't know. It seems like if they say that you can get the quarterly reports, then I'm trying to understand why you say you can't get the data from last year that you're waiting for the auditing department. There seems to be a disconnect with what I'm hearing and what you are saying if we're able to do these quarterly reports, then why don't you have data from 2026?

At this point, it would lend itself to confusion if there is a difference. So we want to make sure that we use the final audited financial numbers at this point. Okay.

And David, I know that Councilor Culpepper is going to probably want to reach out to you and get some information regarding the Connecticut commission that was established. uh we'd love to partner with Culpepper if he does decide to go that route and get some more insight i'm always I am always on the side of being as transparent as possible when it comes to city dollars in particular because these are the taxes of the people and anything that we can do to create Pathways that allow for that is something that I'm always going to raise my hand up and say, I want to be a part of. So I'm looking forward to connecting with you on that Steve, as well as with you to hear more about what you have gathered from other cities and to partner alongside you all to be partners in this good work. And thank you chair I see that my time is definitely up. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Fitzgerald.

Thank you Chair and thank you Jim, Steve, David for being on with us today. I don't have many questions. It's more just, I support this going to quarterly reports. I think it will help. I was a rough one for us and we anticipate upcoming next springs to be equally if not more difficult. With some of the decisions we have to make, so I think the transparency on the revenue coming in will be helpful in terms of explaining to our constituents Where their money's going and why things are being cut, what money has not been coming in or is coming in that we used to have come in, etc. And so, you know, and I think two quarterly months we could pick up a trend even quicker. I agree with that, David. But I think even at months there'd be sort of trends we can begin to see and follow more than an annual report

And again, just as the belt gets a little bit tighter, it's going to be more important to communicate that to the general public. and many more. But really here at the end of the day, just to say support this change. I thank the maker for bringing this forward and I hope we can see it soon. And Jim, I did hear you say like, yeah, it's a little bit more of a lift I'm sure this is just a couple of formulas in the spreadsheet we just switch around and can have done, so I'm happy to hear that staff does have the capacity to do this. But yeah, that's really all we're going to say today. But just support this and I think it will be helpful in transparency going forward not only for the constituents but also for us as councillors

who get to amend this budget. So thank you, Chair, and thank you for the panel.

Thank you, Councilor Fitzgerald. I apologize everybody my internet is spotty so I keep going in and out but i will pass it over to council Pepen and apologies if um if you don't hear from me i'm trying to get onto my phone so just flagging to central staff that i'm gonna um get on i'm probably gonna be iphone Hey, everyone.

Can you hear me well? Perfect. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for having this hearing, Madam Chair. This is a topic that is of great interest to me but also my residents. I'm very grateful to the makers as well. I am very supportive of this just because i think that if we are able to review the revenues coming into the city it's going to help us understand Where we are fiscally, how are we doing in terms of budget-wise for the next fiscal year? I think that personally speaking even just being able to look at where the money's coming from and setting expectations of what the next quarter may look like helps me understand also which departments are bringing in, which revenue. What type of work are they doing? And obviously this year was very, I think the previous councilors have mentioned that this year it was very different.

We had major events in the summertime and that brought in a extra set of resources but I just think that moving forward This is what we need to be doing. I think that when we talk about quarterly reviews or annual reviews of a specific item it's just helpful not just for us as counselors but even to explain to our residents what's going on. If they have questions. So that's why I'm supportive of this. And I just have, I don't know if Steve or Jim, if it's the city or the outside partner but My question to you all is with a report like this on a quarterly review type of format, does it also help us or David I think you mentioned something about the more that we provide

updates on our revenues, the better it is for us to hold the city accountable to understand how's it looking. Does it help us also see patterns of growth? Where we could also be potentially generating more revenue or thinking about ideas of how do we be more creative in the city depending on patterns and the seasons in the

I wanted to give Jim pride of place in answering this. And I have some thoughts, but I think I'd love to hear from him first.

Sure. So so I think that's an excellent comment and Summary of revenue, it's an excellent opportunity to find situations where you could increase revenue trends. Governor Healey actually has offered through a Municipal Empowerment Act that has not been taken up aggressively at the legislature opportunities to increase some of their It's not just for Boston, it's for all communities to opt into for hotels and meals. But many of the fees and fines that are generated in The budget are set in ordinance where the City Council plays instrumental in that effort to sort of Codify, Changes in Rates.

We are always looking to see how we stand against other communities But also, it's the impacts on the residents. So will this pose an undue burden on the residence? And there is this economic concept of, you know, in the elasticity that like, what will the consequences be of changing certain rates? And then, so those are probably a smaller portion of our budget but it still continues to be something we pay attention to. What we've sort of been a beneficiary of is a very robust development market that occurred in the city over several years where new growth was very strong and, you know,

I see that the development pipeline has sort of slowed down a bit and in that, that could be going on. That could be connected to many different things you know interest rates are are high, uncertainty, global uncertainty, lots of market uncertainties, tariff uncertainties. All of these things play into People's decisions on, and also just the uncertainty of certain. Every day you read a story about like oh we thought this company was gonna start up a unit here in the city and they chose to decided to put it in another city or something like that. So then we couldn't possibly embed ourselves and all of the decision making made around the city, but Again, all of these revenues. So I think it's good to know it.

I think one of the most important things is to make sure that we're protecting the services that the city provides by ensuring that we have sufficient revenue to cover those expenses. I think everybody on the council is very familiar of some statutory places where we're allowed to overspend that continue have put budgetary pressure on there, things like public safety spending and judgment settlements. and the New England snow and ice account that impacts so many communities. So I think this information that you'll be getting is part of your effort, stewardship to say do we have enough Okay. Thank you, Jim. Steve?

Yeah, not much to add there. I do think Jim's exactly right. I would say with some of the more material accounts it gives you the opportunity to have an understanding hey what's affecting kind of the macro environment around property values around new construction, around permitting. And then I would say on the smaller less material accounts from time to time you'll be able to identify or at least bring to the attention If there's a possible operational issues and some of these small dollar accounts, it may be maybe that they They're holding all the checks until the second quarter or something smaller. I mean, outside of the city of Boston, I've had the experience with a large organization sometimes you know oh that guy retired like who was collecting all the rents on uh on particular properties and once you identified hey why is it that account used to have a steady income, why is you can solve those problems.

So, I think again we're not gonna close the budget gap with operational improvements But it's money that the city is owed and we should be sure we're appropriately collecting it.

I appreciate that because we could always look at it from our personal perspective. If I try to look at my own personal bank statements every month and if Where are those recurring payments happening? What subscriptions do I have that are consistently taking money that I may not be aware of? As a person, if you're not doing that on a Even on a monthly basis or even on a bi-weekly basis, you're going to probably be spending money on things you're not even aware of. and that's the way I look at it from a bigger picture with the city's budget, which is why I'm very for this. And I'm thankful, I think it was Councilor Worrell that put this forward. So just I'm very supportive of this, I think that we can do some good analysis of our city's budget and revenue moving forward so that's it for me guys thank you for the work to do thank you from the makers and thank you Madam Chair for hosting this hearing

Thank you, Councilor Pepén. All right, I'll go into my questions and I apologize if there's an echo because of my phone. Speak loudly. So the language in this is pretty straightforward, it just says the supervisor budget shall be required to provide quarterly revenue reports detailing all revenue collected by I have been a public servant my entire life. Coming from a world of finance is not something that I have experience in, so My questions are more about operationally how this would work in practice and how we can shore up the language to, I think get specific. I think we can all have a baseline understanding of what a revenue report includes, but to Councilor Worrell's point, we always have to assume You know, a standard because each executive is different.

And who knows if this executives definition of a revenue report is different from the next one or the next So I think what constitutes sufficient detail, since it says revenue reports detailing all revenue collected To date by item, like is that getting into detail and should we get prescriptive about? And this is more of a collective conversation kind of wading into the waters of a working session. But should we Define revenue reports as having property tax revenue, state aid, local receipts, federal revenue, departmental revenue, investment income, non-recurring revenue. while also including revenue forecasts. And it seems like there's a desire to get the monthly reports that's given to every department. Jim, can you just describe Can you just add to whatever I missed?

Like if we're going to define revenue reports, what else should be in there in addition to what I mentioned? And also, what's the feasibility of including that? At least I'm still interested in doing quarterly. But what it may mean to try to get every department's report sent to City Council on a monthly basis

Yeah. That I would have to defer because it says automated system generator report. To our IT and auditing department, I think is the business process owner. But I think in terms of the language that you use I have chosen that it seems to be comprehensive enough by saying revenue by item, because there is a common We might call it an account, but item is basically the same thing. I think that's sort of strong evergreen language You know, particularly with the city code. I think we've all encountered things that were probably not evergreen enough to like it was very specific to a time when you know Thank you for joining us.

Paper, you know at some point. So I think it's sufficient to cover the intent Leaves room to have it achieve the intended result. I would think quarterly meets the needs, but I think I think sometimes you can get overloaded with content and then you lose sort of the higher level narrative. So, there's enormous data on open data that like whether it be But sometimes when it's raw data, it doesn't tell you enough. So we have payroll information that's posted up there at the open checkbook very, very granular There's always some uniqueness of the payroll data. You know, potential buyout or settlement or something that's skewing the data.

So you have to control for that bar There's certain activities, even sometimes how experiences are reflected against a certain department. We've often encountered that like with the particularly capital expenditures, the host department it's sometimes the expenses are attracted associated with that department but then The actual person managing the expenses are the Public Facilities Department. So sometimes it's like, who do you ask a question about? The operating department doesn't necessarily have as much information about the contracts so you'd have to know that is the right thing. So I think with annual operating revenues, I think the language probably is comprehensive enough. I don't know that you want to put any more belts and suspenders on it Thank you for joining us.

for future iterations of whoever the executive is or the city council. So, okay that makes sense. And then I guess like the latter part of my question, it seems like there's a little bit of confusion what your operational relationship is with the auditing department. Can you just get into What that looks like, I mean on a quarterly basis maybe for the purposes of this discussion, why we cannot have these or describe these numbers because it has to go through auditing. Maybe we should've had auditing in this conversation but any Yeah, it's so...

the auditor is responsible for sort of the actuals and execution of uh the budget so the budget office has sort of and many more. Is it in the right spot? Is it at the right time frame? and they work with a third party auditor to make sure of that. So is this reflected according to accounting principles in the right place at the right amount and that it's, so auditing I think is a term in a lot of organizations that's called controller. So your budget office is more about sort and more closely aligned with department operations.

And in sort of setting, but the controller is the one who sort of like manages The sort of details associated with it. So that is a process that we do audited financial statements and you tend to not want to to release those until they're final. And that's sort of best practice, to not issue preliminary ones unaudited because it's sort Then you get different sources of data. And that's another concern is if you have dueling, competing pieces of information that you can't reconcile.

Yeah, and that makes sense to me. And if we're talking about government accountability transparency when there's different pieces of information it's hard for us to have a baseline as to compare So that makes sense to me. I have three questions that I think a little bit more straightforward and then we can go to additional round if folks want, but and again, getting maybe into the language but does it matter where it's submitted? Like where do you submit the expenditure reports now? Do you submit it to the city clerk and then a copy thereof transmitted to the City Council. I know it's published online, but is that something that we should also include in this ordinance?

Yeah. I think we've been submitting it to the chair ways and means because that's usually the place where it's requested from, but obviously through central staff. But, you know... I guess there are opportunities to be more specific, but I defer to you guys on that.

I'm just looking at the chair. I think it may make sense to just have a copy submitted to the city clerk's office. That way The Agenda, and then a copy submitted to the Chair of Ways and Means. I mean if it just goes to City Clerk and we see it that's fine. And then I also think it should be published online as well. Just thoughts on that. Comments, concerns?

Yeah, there's lots of other participants in that. So I don't want to speak unilaterally for this administration because it involves both other agencies and including IT auditing so...

Okay. Well, I think at the very least it could and we can talk through this a little bit more but it should be submitted to the city clerk's office. um what is the so revenue collected and shared and internally has already been asked oh something was brought up about is there any information that needs to be protected like legally That's been talked about that we need to just be concerned with.

I'd probably defer to the law department, but we tend to want to make sure There's a lot of data that is the subject of privacy, so it's obviously more basic things like social security numbers. of Employees or Vendors. But we tend to get a lot of privacy issues that center around personnel information, so

But that's not something that would be usually included.

Well, usually we're okay to report it summarized. We just can't provide it at the employee level.

I may have been, I think I was the one who brought it up. The edge case I had in mind was if there was a very specific bucket of revenue where we only had a single taxpayer where disclosing a quarterly figure is essentially saying entity Y has paid this much in taxes which may or may not have May or may not have privacy implications, but that was sort of the edge case that I was thinking about. And I fear begging the indulgence of the chair, I have to host a reception for City of Boston employees at noontime. So if I could take your leave and thank you again for the opportunity to testify. And if anyone has any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate either to reach out or you all know where to find me on Wednesday afternoon. So I'm happy to answer further questions.

Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it.

All right. Thank you.

Okay. Just following up on that, Jim, there's no one entity that... That would be just an interesting case, but...

You know, it's interesting that Steve Patek brought up the privacy. That is something that's routinely articulated by the State Department of Revenue when we ask for more granular um excise and meals they tend to cite taxpayer privacy There may be some issues for why they won't provide that level of detail. So there's maybe things I'm not thinking of Which is something to consider. And it probably has gone through some due diligence on the open checkbook phenomenon already, like we can't put this because it's a privacy issue.

Okay. Yeah, just again something to consider as we move forward. I know it would be an anomaly but My last question is, this is supposed to take effect immediately upon passage. Are you prepared to comply immediately or is a transition period necessary?

I think we stand ready to comply with the ordinance. Obviously, if there's some technical issue that arises obviously we'll have that communication with you.

All right, that's it for my questions. Thank you again to the lead sponsors for pushing this forward and thank you all so much for your contributions. Just looking at the chair we have Councilor Worrell I'm sorry, excuse me, the co-sponsor, Councilor Weber is still on. Do you folks have additional questions?

Yes. Thank you, Chair. Jim, and I guess this question is also for David too, is are we able to...I guess what David, to what you've seen around the country and what is included in some of these revenue reports. And then Jim What else could we include in these revenue reports? I'm thinking around uncollected, what we build, delinquency rates. Any other information that can be useful to the council and to the public that could be included.

That's a different set of, I think within the Treasury Department is an accounts receivable section that it's a distributed responsibility. So departments have their own So many city transactions are sort of upfront point-of-sale transactions. Those are actually the easiest transactions to manage because someone pays, I guess there is some reconciliation to return something if it didn't move forward, but instances where there are Billing Relationships. It's the department who's interfacing with what they call a customer that manages that, you know so but just like any Any business relationship you have, people that may be behind on paying and things like that.

But that might be a very comprehensive, wide-ranging thing I wouldn't sort of introduce that into, because that's a whole set of other variables.

Yeah, and I haven't looked at specifics of other cities in what they report. But I think that's a great conversation to have with Mr. Williamson and others and figure out something that makes sense I'm sure y'all could work that out and come up with something that makes sense. And what about

Neighborhood Breakdown Director Williamson. Is it possible for I know some of these revenue streams could be you know whether it's taxes maybe You know,

I would have to defer to others. I simply don't know how complicated that would be.

And then, I guess my other thinking is and maybe we could put this in the language. Even though it's quarterly reporting, hopefully we can break it out by month, right? So you know, we still see each month breakdown of the revenue But it's quarterly that we see those months. So still disaggregating the month within that quarter, So we can see the revenue for each month. That is something that I probably want to work into the language.

And I guess my- It's really quick, Councilor Worrell. Can we do that?

Yeah, well you know again I would have to defer to the folks who are like writing this report to like the complexity of doing that so.

But Jim, you are reporting it monthly. You're looking at the revenue monthly already.

Yes, it's just this report that's generated that we share with the council is up. We're looking We're feeding it into something that we are using for analytical purposes. I don't know if that's confusing, but we're using it differently than how auditing would report it. because there are certain accounting principles on how they, you know... There's examples where we wait past the actual closing period of a month to make sure that we're capturing a certain payroll before we look at the data. because we want to make sure that we have a certain set of payrolls included. So it's just different pieces of it. The way we consume the data is differently, different than the way auditing reviews it.

Right. I know what you're saying, but we'll talk about revenue, payrolls and expenditure.

Yeah. Revenue would have a different dynamic to it. But again there's that seasonality of it when certain revenues are recognized.

And I'm still saying reported quarterly, right? Still submit the report quarterly. Yep.

And property taxes are also handled sort of differently as they are assessed or the bills go out. The revenue is recognized, and we all know that people have time to pay their bills. So it's sort of an accounting way of reflecting that The private taxes are been assessed and sent out, but it doesn't mean we've got everybody's individual tax bills paid in just yet.

David, what are your thoughts on best practices across the country around how the reporting is done monthly versus quarterly?

Well, if it's feasible to do a monthly I would do it monthly. But that's something you'll have to work out with them to see if that's doable. It sounds like it might be. You know, I forget which councilor said We all review our finances probably monthly and decide whether or not we're spending too much Maybe to take that vacation or retire, I'm going to have start Ubering. So to me, that makes sense.

David, in your research is there any correlation between revenue reporting and I guess identifying areas where government has now identified like as a collection issue opposed to like a Forecasting problem, so we might have an area where we need to focus on collecting that has been kind of solved through the more transparency around

Well, I haven't studied that specifically but I'm guessing that has been looked at. I think checking with some of the national associations National League of Cities, and probably Mr. Williamson's associations he belongs to. Perhaps some of those have looked at that closely. And so there are some great public administration scholars out Suzanne Piotrowski at Rutgers and others that have probably looked at that.

All right, all right yeah and just wanted to also chime in I do believe that it should be filed With the city clerk chair, I think in my understanding, the expenditure one is filed with the auditor and the city clerks based off what I believe says in the charter. So I would want the same thing to happen with the revenue reports. And hopefully, you know like what BRJP we do We don't have to add this into the ordinance, but with BRJP we're having these conversations Well, by law we're supposed to have two hearings a year on the BRJP numbers.

I don't know if that's something that the council wants to explore around revenue projections because it kind of encourages us to have that conversation instead of just receiving these reports as filed on our agenda. That's something I've been thinking about during this conversation, If the body wants to make it similar to BRJP, where we're having two or four meetings a year on revenue. I think that is, look back through my notes. All of my questions.

Okay great and thank you for for clarifying that it does say in the charter, right? Because I don't have it in front of me. I'm sorry but it does says that it has to go to the city clerk and the auditor already so we wouldn't have to add that in. It's already there?

Well, that's for expenditures

Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe we put something in there that just says where it goes and then for, this is maybe a question for the Megs If we want to put in something like the BRJP, is that something that would be necessary to go into a city charter or can it be done by ordinance? I don't know, I think it should be fine. But I'm open to all of it. I think this is great. You folks do it already and I think just the finer point of okay we know it's going to be quarterly but can we please include the monthly I'm sorry that I'm blanking on the word here, sleep deprived with a five-month-old. But just the monthly report as well. and I'm sorry, I realize that we have Councilor Weber here as well. Councilor Webber do you have any other additional questions?

Yeah, I was just going to highlight for Councilor Worrell in the chair. The languages provide required to the supervisor, required to provide quarterly revenue reports maybe to clarify to who or where but leave that up for So the filer, I think it's of the City Council. And maybe it was just clear from the rest of the ordinance. But I didn't get into your point. You could add some more detail, maybe?

Yeah, definitely. I think that's something that should be in there. And then I was even saying getting more prescriptive about what the items are but it sounds like it's all encompassing And that way we're not missing anything, which I agree with.

Yeah, maybe it's something... I mean, yeah, I guess like different administrations might feel differently

Is there a national standard, maybe for David that we can refer to? For revenue reports is I don't know. I just want to make sure that it's consistent

It's a good question. I don't know, but I think that it wouldn't take long to figure that out, find out.

Okay.

Yeah okay thank you Chair, it's for me.

Thank you. I think we are, if seeing and hearing no other questions, comments or concerns, we can go to public testimony. I want to thank David and Jim as well for your work and Steve as always for his great insights and nonpartisan feedback. We do have one person signed up for a public testimony at this point, we're gonna transition to that section of the hearing. We have George Lee, that has signed up for public testimony. Central staff if you want to go ahead and elevate him to panelists. George we all know you but Please feel free to introduce yourself and your affiliation. You have two minutes. We have two people signed up for public testimony. Okay, thank you. I apologize. So George, and then I'll look to the sheet here. And Gregory Maynard. Okay. George, you're up first.

Hi good morning my name is George Lee I'm an organizer with Youth Justice and Power Union and part of the Better Budget Alliance and I'm speaking in full support of this ordinance Basically, the City Council and Mayor make a lot of decisions that are impacting hundreds of thousands of residents in Boston. And it's important to make those decisions based on the reality of what people are going through Information, which unfortunately often gets hidden. I forget which panelist was speaking before about it feeling a little bit like Congress and the president and some of the dysfunctionality when information is hidden from city council or from the public. and it has real-life impact. So right now, despite announcements that Cover up this reality, there's 1400 youth jobs that are being cut at different organizations because city funding has been cut.

And that comes directly from the budget decisions last year where there were a lot of claims that there wasn't going to be enough revenue And there's just a big power balance between the information the mayor had about revenue and what they could decide versus what the city council knew, and what the public in the community knew. And just to take youth jobs as an example, it was a $5.25 million cut. That's only 0.1% of the projected revenue that the mayor put forward and so having transparency just to know like Hey, could revenue be like 0.1% bigger maybe than what you're suggesting has an impact on thousands of young people and families and communities? And the community deserves the truth The City Council deserves the truth about the reality of what's happening with things like these cuts that are getting covered up and glossed over by misleading announcements, and about the truth of what is happening financially so decisions can be made.

And I guess I'll just end by saying that this question of revenue is really fundamental to being able to create responsible budgets. The legislature has a lot more capacity and research and ability to look at revenue than the city council does. When there's claims that there's not enough revenue or we need to make cuts, but there's no information about How much revenue there actually will be or the powers to determine revenue. Those are life-or-death decisions that are being made and fixing How much power the community and city council has over looking at revenue and deciding revenue are fundamental to making sure that our communities are fully invested in instead of being cut for the sake of some pretend scare austerity that may not actually be real. Thank you.

Thank you, George. Next up we have Greg. Hello

My name is Gregory Maynard, and I am the co-founder and executive director of the Boston Policy Institute. This ordinance seeks to get revenue data, but it avoids a different issue. The council hasn't shown much interest in revenue data during budget processes. This is worrying because under Mayor Wu, the city's revenue forecasts have been much less accurate than they were under Mayor Walsh. Over the course of Walsh's whole tenure, so FY15 to FY20, the Walsha administration was about 1.1% over its revenue forecasts In its first three years, FY23 to FY25, the Wu administration was about 4.4% over. Last spring during the FY27 budget process I urge the council to make revenue forecasts a priority. However, this council did not do that and Chair Weber and the Ways and Means Committee failed to hold a standalone hearing on revenue during the FY27 budget process.

Hopefully, this ordinance is an indication the council intends to start grappling with revenue. The body should do that because the Wu administration's inaccurate revenue forecasts appear to be a growing issue. Inaccurate revenue forecasts were in Mayor Wu's favor during her first term, allowing the mayor and the council to spend tens of millions of dollars in surplus revenue on projects like the Housing Accelerator Fund. But in FY26, the worm turned. The FY26 deficit was driven in part by inaccurate revenue forecasts. CFO Groffenberger reported back in March that $7 million of the FY26 Deficit was due to permits and licensing missing its revenue forecast Here is one really worrying example. FY26 appears to be the third year in a row that the city has missed its building permit revenue forecast.

Given how important new construction is to Boston's property tax-dependent budget, consistent misses like that deserve scrutiny. Boston is in the midst of a fiscal crisis thanks to falling office values and the collapse of new growth. In FY26, the city experienced its first deficit in years In FY27, the city was forced to lay off hundreds of employees again for the first time in years. Solving these problems requires accurate information This ordinance could help, but the reality is that it only will if City Council and Mayor Wu are serious about focusing on this issue in public.

Okay, Centre staff do we have any more folks? All set. Okay, I want to thank everybody for their contributions to this great conversation. I think we have small details to figure out. I don't know if that warrants a working session but I'll work with the chair on that. But just really it's going to stay in committee for now. But pretty straightforward. So I think, yeah, before I say anything else, I'll just say thank you and this hearing on docket 1099 is adjourned. Thanks everybody.

Thank you.