City Council - Ways & Means Committee Hearing on Dockets #0733-0740, 0748, FY27 Budget: Labor Compliance & Worker Protections, Law, Revolving Fund

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Good morning. My name is Ben Weber. I'm the Boston City Councilor for District 6 and the chair of the Boston City Council on Ways and Means, the Boston City Council Committee on Ways and Means. Today is April 23rd, 2026, and the exact time is 1011. This hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash Council dash TV and broadcasts on Xfinity channel 8 RCN channel 82 and Fios channel 964 The Council's budget review process encompasses a series of public hearings which began last week and run through June. We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony for the record. You can do this in several ways. First, you can attend one of our hearings and give public testimony. We'll take public testimony after the counselor's first round of questions.

and also at two hearings dedicated to public testimony. The full hearing schedule is on our website. at boston.gov slash council dash budget. Our scheduled listening sessions where the public just gives testimony are both in person here at City Hall. Tuesday April 28th at 6 p.m. and again on Thursday May 26th at 6 p.m. Again both right here in this chamber. You can give testimony in person here in the chamber or virtually via Zoom. For in-person testimony, come to the chamber and sign up on the sheet near the entrance. For virtual testimony, you can sign up using our online form on our Council Budget Review website or by emailing the committee at ccc.wm.boston.gov or by emailing Karishma Chauhan, that's K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A dot C-H-O-U-H-A-N at boston.gov.

When you are called to testify, state your name and affiliation and residence and please limit your comments to two minutes. Email your written You can either testify in person or by Zoom, or you can submit written testimony to the committee at ccc.wm. A third option is to submit a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website. For more information on the City Council budget process and how to testify, Please visit the City Council's budget website at boston.gov slash council dash budget. In person, public testimony will be taken again here after our first round of questions from Councillors. individuals would be called on in the order in which they've signed up and will have two minutes to testify. Again, if you're watching online and want to testify, email Karishma Chauhan, that's K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A dot C-H-O-U-H-A-N at boston.gov.

For the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. This morning's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740 and docket number 0748. An overview of the FY27 operating budgets for the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections, the Law Department, and the Property Damage Revolving Fund. These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu when we referred to the committee on April 8th. Murphy, and I've received a letter of absence from Councilor Flynn. No, just kidding, he's here, of course, and he was here first. Yep, I've, yeah. I've received letters of absence from Council President Breadon and Councillor Santana. We waive opening remarks at these hearings, so we're going to go directly to the panel. who I'm going to introduce.

We're joined by Michael Firestone, Corporation Counsel for the City of Boston. Sam Dinning, Chief of Staff and Policy for the Law Department, Kristen Coventry, Office Manager for the Law Department, Monique Mitchell, Senior Program Manager for the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections, and Jody Sugarman Brazen, Deputy Chief of the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections. So I'm going to hand things over to the panel. I think I saw slides or you got a presentation. So however you want to go about this, the floor is now yours.

Thank you so much. Good morning, counselors. My name is Jody Sugarman-Brozan. I have the honor of serving as deputy chief in the Worker Empowerment Cabinet and direct the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections. We're going to go through our slides really quickly to give you an update on what we've accomplished over the last year and what our plans are for FY27. So first, just a little background. The Worker Empowerment Cabinet includes three departments, the Office of Workforce Development, the Office of Youth Employment and Opportunity and the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections. And we're here today just speaking about the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections. Our budget is $1.8 million. About 64% of that budget is spent specifically for the Boston Resident Jobs Policy Office. And that is also where 10 of our 13 staff reside.

Our budget this year has seen a 1.4% decrease of about $27,000. and I will go in now to a little bit more about what we do. The Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections is a central resource for workers. We protect and promote labor standards and policies that create Fair Workplaces for All Workers. And primarily we're charged with enforcing the city's labor policy and worker protections. That includes the Boston Resident Jobs Policy, the Boston Jobs Living Wage and Prevailing Wage Ordinance, the Boston Wage Theft Executive Order, and now the Heat Illness and Injury Prevention Ordinance. We also provide free worker health and safety training and we coordinate a worker safety and rights initiative. I'm going to go very quickly through the Boston resident jobs policy because that is something that we had a hearing on just

Last week or the week before, so we've had a lot of time to talk about this, but Boston Resident Jobs Policy was established in 1983 with updates in 2017. It sets goals for private development and projects over 50,000 square feet that have to meet certain employment standards. At least 51% of total work hours for Boston residents, 40% The ordinance is enforced based on seven administrative compliance measures which are listed here, primarily focused on submitting on-time payroll, attending pre-construction meetings, and things like that. And over the last year, and we, again, just had an opportunity to present on this, we've done a lot of work. The office has monitored 166 projects in this fiscal year.

We've streamlined compliance related to the Boston Resident Jobs Policy and state prevailing wage compliance. Now, contractors who are covered by BRJP are able to, through our Salesforce database, submit their certified payroll records combined with their BRJP compliance documentation. We also have a full-time staff I'm dedicated to maintaining our Boston Resident Jobs Policy Jobs Bank, which has about 400 workers registered. And the Jobs Bank has received 11 requests for labor in this fiscal year. We created a transparent NECOL system for sanctions and we've expanded transparency through upgrades to our real-time dashboard. Our numbers at the moment from July to March July 2025 to March of 2026. 19% of work hours have gone to Boston residents, 42% to people of color, 7% to women.

And this is just a Slides showing our dashboard, which I've shared with many counselors before. We've made many improvements thanks to conversations we've had with the counselors to add different ways that you can Track data by year, developer, contractor, subcontractor, now by trade. And I will hand it off to my colleague.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Councillors. Again, my name is Monique Mitchell. I'm the Senior Program Manager for Living Wage and Wage Theft. And in my role, I primarily oversee the Boston Jobs Living Wage and Prevailing Wage Ordinance. And so this ordinance has been in fact about 30 years or so. And the primary focus is to ensure that workers who are working on a service contract of a sizable amount earn a living wage. The ordinance stipulates how the living wage can be calculated. It can be either 110% of the federal minimum wage 110% of the state minimum wage or using the consumer price index percentage to calculate it. And so for this upcoming July, the living wage will increase to $19.36. So this past year we monitored about over 500 vendors, about 1,000 contracts that meet the ordinance requirements for living wage. And so that means that they'll be paying their workers at least $0.1936 per hour.

This past year, we also worked to implement the prevailing waste section of the ordinance. The ordinance is amended in July of 2021. And so before that, for building services, particularly cleaning and service security guards. and so this year we've been able to implement both building service contracts as well as Lisa's tool workers who pay prevailing wage. We continue to work to train City of Boston staff as well as our vendors on how to meet the ordinance requirements, ensuring that they do submit their accrual reports as well as the different forms that need to be completed. And lastly, we've also been working to implement a data tool in order to meet our compliance demands for our Bundy Smith compliance reports online versus submitting via email. We also oversee the Boston Wage Staff Executive Order, and this has been in effect for about over 10 years or so. And so one of the key things we've been working on this past year is implementing a data tool So we currently look at six different data sets.

And so with this data tool, it brings it all into one area. So we can search by employer's name and have all the data from the different data sets available to us in one area. We've also received WHSS complaints throughout the year, around 22 to be specific, and we refer them to the Massachusetts Attorney General's Fair Labor Division. And so we're grateful for our partnership because any complaints that we receive in our form, we can send it to them versus having the worker resubmit a new claim. And so this past year, we referred 20 claims to their office. One was favorably resolved, meaning that the worker received their money back. Four are currently open and pending investigation. Seven complaints are under review, determining, they'll determine if they're open investigation or they'll issue a private action letter. and eight currently received a private right of action letter allowing the worker to pursue different methods on their own. One of the other areas we work on in our office is multilingual health and safety training

and we do this through OSHA 10 and OSHA 30. By offering this training, we meet two of our ordinances. One of the ordinances as mentioned on the slide is a construction demolition safety ordinance. The ordinance requires that site safety coordinators for large-scale projects have an OSHA 30, and the OSHA 10 supports the Boston jobs residency policy by allowing workers to have the opportunity to work on public projects. And so today, we have trained over 600 Boston workers through OSHA trainings, which is great to see, and we offered in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole.

So you'll forgive me for the amount of text on this slide, but I thought the counselors would like an update on the implementation of the heat ordinance that was passed last summer. We are well underway. We've worked with the procurement team to develop a list of contract categories that are covered by the ordinance. We use labor statistics data to identify those workers most at risk of exposure to excessive heat. and you can see the list is here. We've developed the required heat illness prevention plan affidavit that covered contractors will need to sign. The law department is reviewing that for us now. We've also contracted with a vendor who will be providing three in-person train-the-trainer sessions for City of Boston managers to learn how to provide training on heat protections and how to develop a heat illness prevention plan for their department or team. Mascosh is also providing a full scheduled virtual and in-person technical assistance sessions on how to create that heat illness prevention plan.

We've got a draft template for that plan. And we've also already scheduled three webinars for hot-covered contractors and anybody who'd like to attend. The flyer is here. Those are coming up on May 4th, 27th and June 2nd. and we have a new website specifically for workers in heat protections, boston.gov backslash heat dash protection. So we are well underway in implementing this and very proud to be I mean one of very few municipalities in the country that have an ordinance to protect workers from excessive heat. and now we're going to talk a little bit about our workers rights initiative and I just wanted to give a little background. This initiative was originally founded after March of 2023, folks may remember the owner of a very popular pizza restaurant in Boston was charged with labor trafficking.

He had assaulted undocumented employees, withheld wages, forced workers to work over 80 hours per week for little or no pay, and threatened deportation. We heard very strongly from our partners that there was an urgent need for immigrant workers' rights training So we worked with them and our Partners at the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Advancement to quickly put together a webinar in five languages and 150 workers attended and we knew that this was something that we needed to continue to work on. And this is when we launched the initiative. And I'll pass it back to Monique.

Yeah, so with the worker rights initiative, kind of the backbone of our office, The backbone of our office. So we work with the worker centers, and the worker centers are community-based nonprofit organizations that support marginalized communities, including immigrant communities. typically folks who are workers who are not supported by traditional unions. And so within our first year of offering the worker rights initiative, we work with those four worker senators to offer webinars as well as in-person worker clinics. So with those clinics, we also had a resource partners and with the resource partners included the Boston Legal Services, Justice to Work, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, as well as Attorney General's Office. And so as we continue to figure out how we can meet the needs of our workers, last year we had transitioned to offering our clinics online. So again, we had those resource partners join us online where workers can drop in to connect with them to ask their questions in a safe manner.

and we did that through the feedback we received with the federal administration changes. And again with those changes, again we're looking at how can we meet the folks, how can we meet the community and this past year we partnered with With BCYF to go to the community sites and offer our tabling there so that we can capture anyone who's walking through the community center and distribute information about wage and hour work laws and so forth to best support them.

Thank you. So we are very proud of the impact of this work. Since October of 2024, we've provided $273,375 in funding to worker center and resource partners In service contracts to provide free in-person multilingual workers' rights training and support. We have provided in-person training to more than 650 workers in Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, and Asian Creole. with 180 more workers who will receive it by July. We have provided workers' rights support and referrals to 550 workers, 314 in FY25 236 so far in FY26 through our 16 workers' rights clinics and office hours that Monique just spoke about. We have trained 276 workers through nine multilingual webinars on workers' rights topics ranging from workers with disabilities,

Uber and Lyft drivers and discrimination and harassment. And through this outreach and education, we've made 180 case referrals to our enforcement partners on wage theft, labor trafficking, discrimination, Harassment and Unemployment. And that is all for our presentation. Pass it to our colleagues.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Law Department.

Okay. Good morning. I'm Mike Firestone. I'm the Corporation Counsel with me. Kristen Coveney, our department manager, and Sam Denning, chief of staff and policy counsel. Thank you to the chair and the entire committee for having us here today. We look forward to your questions and a productive discussion. I'd like to start. If it pleases with a brief overview of the law department. So two Main components to our presentation, first some short department background, and then a discussion of a sampling of our ongoing work, including our current work in response to federal actions. The law department, as the councilors are aware, is the in-house law firm representing the city of Boston.

Our attorneys and professionals advise providing legal guidance, perform transactional work, and defend the city, its departments, and employees in legal disputes. The law department is involved in almost everything the city does, especially new initiatives, as our colleagues from labor compliance just mentioned. When the city is doing new work, that means new work for the law department as well. We represent the city, its departments, and employees in their official roles and protect taxpayer dollars by helping ensure the effective and efficient delivery of city programs and services. My colleagues in the department are deeply committed to the ongoing mission of the city to make Boston a great place to grow up, grow old, live, work, visit. and run a business. We do not provide legal advice and services directly to constituents. The department's work breaks down into a few major buckets, as I've outlined. We provide support.

Doing the work that keeps the department going, supporting our attorneys. Kristin oversees that work. We prepare for litigation, conduct research to advise clients. Of course, we have our litigation work. That's work that the counselors are I'm familiar with defending the city, its departments, policies, and employees acting in their official capacity. Many of these cases are negligence and property damage cases that might be just a couple hundred dollars, employment matters and civil rights claims. A big function of our work is government services, advising departments on ordinances, policies, and programs, conducting transactional work, These lawyers support and facilitate the work of departments. We review every contract that is advanced by every City Department, and then we have our legal advisors who conduct both litigation and departmental advising on behalf of specific departments that are big enough or specialized enough to warrant a dedicated team of attorneys.

Examples include the Boston Police Department, the Boston Public Schools, Inspectional Services, and Public Facilities. Our specialized units include Workers' Compensation, our Tax Title Division, and Public Records all serve as specific important functions that require specialized legal knowledge that our attorneys and staff have. Kristen.

Sure. Good morning. Thank you for having us here today. This slide is a breakdown of the staffing levels of the teams within the law department. Currently, we have 75 total employees. At the moment, we have nine vacancies which we're working towards filling. You can see the distribution here which includes both attorneys and the non-staff which would include support staff, paralegals, clerks. Government Services and Litigation are our biggest divisions but then a wide distribution across various other departments and specialized units.

Our FY27 proposed budget is Just shy of $11 million, 10.9. The department doesn't have a complicated budget. It's about 80% for the payroll of the department attorneys and staff. about 20% for contracted services, the vast majority of which is for outside counsel, and some money for the technology that is our case management system. So again, very similar to our A budget from last year, 1.4% decrease. We used outside council. for matters that pose a potential conflict of interest, require specialized legal expertise that's not housed internally, or for one reason or another, perhaps related to the previous points, require resources beyond what the department has in-house. Sam.

We also wanted to put these numbers in context because we understand that personnel numbers and budget numbers don't necessarily mean anything without the context of how other people doing similar work are staffed. So these charts reflect how Boston's law department compares to other law departments in Massachusetts, whether as a proportion of personnel or a proportion of city budgets. And as you can see where the column on the left there The Law Department has consistently run a very lean operation, and that's whether you measure it as a percentage of budget. or employees. And I say that to highlight how much our attorneys are doing, how much work they're doing, the diversity of the work that they're doing, and how well they're doing that work.

We are in a profession, the legal profession is one of specialties, and our attorneys are called on to be both generalists and often specialists in specific areas, and they do that work phenomenally well. If you flip to the next slide, when you compare similar numbers to peer cities nationally, you get similar results. These departments aren't operating under Massachusetts laws, but they perform similar functions. And Boston, as we all know, is a leader in so many different areas of policy work. and every time the city is leading on policy work that also creates new complicated complex legal questions to go along with it and so those are the things that our law department is supporting every day.

We'll just talk about a few highlights of our work from the past year. The department's work is incredibly varied. A huge variety of work. Some of it's seen and makes it into the newspapers, a lot of it unseen, just a smooth administration of city business on a day-to-day basis. We advise nearly 80 departments reviewing hundreds of ordinances, orders, contracts, grant agreements, MOUs, MOAs, real estate transactions, and other legal matters. Matters that have come to the council's attention include are averaged to support the construction of the new cancer hospital and the work to reimagine Jocelyn Park. The reforms advanced by the Elections Department for the 2024 elections, launching the Boston Energy Saver program to save Thank you.

Thank you. Advanced at that time by the Boston Public Health Commission and the city and several claims for upwards of $20 million. We collected more than $7 million in unpaid taxes. We recovered $650,000 plus in funds for injured police officers and firefighters. We recently drafted the contract for the new fire commissioner. We're so proud to have him in that role. We issued guidance to school personnel on how to handle immigration enforcement. assisted in construction matters for Court Street, the Irving School, the New Carter School, the North End Community Center, and the EMS Seaport Station. And we negotiated the lease of City Hall Plaza for the FIFA Van Fest.

Again, an incredible variety of work, not reflecting hundreds of cases in litigation and workers' comp cases, hundreds of enforcement actions by inspectional services and Financial claims and the review of hundreds of contracts across those 80 departments. It's an enormous amount of work that we do successfully with approximately 20 staff and fewer than 50 attorneys. I'll turn it over to Sam to elaborate, but the council knows that our federal response is critical work that is worth tens of millions of dollars to the city and You know, at this moment where cities remain a target for the federal administration, we appreciate our recent collaboration with the Boston City Council to add your voices

In the recent amicus filing of local jurisdictions in our effort to challenge the illegal termination of Haitian TPS at the US Supreme Court, We're currently working on issues from the defense of the Boston Trust Act to federal to defense of federal funding for science and challenges to the illegal and unconstitutional and deadly ice surges. We're proud of the work of the department in representing the city and our residents and helping other communities across the country to do so themselves. Sam.

I'll say more about a few specific things on this list, but I do want to emphasize before I go into that, this federal work is largely in addition to and on top of the work that the law department is doing every day and has always been doing every day. That's the work that really makes the city run. That's the work that the law department does to advance city initiatives. The federal work is separate from that. But attorneys across the department have been working on that this year on top of all of the existing things that actually help the city run. So one of the ways that manifests is obviously daily questions from departments. When we're in an uncertain landscape, the law department gets a lot of questions. and we are also trying to understand that uncertain landscape and provide departments with the best advice that we can. As Mike mentioned, we're also defending the Trust Act in court right now against a lawsuit by the Justice Department.

That case, the court asked for additional briefing on that case. We've moved to dismiss. We've now completed our additional briefing and expect a hearing to be scheduled on that at some point soon, but at the court's discretion. Overall, in terms of the litigation that the law department has been involved with, we've been involved. We've been a plaintiff in seven cases. The city has been a plaintiff in seven cases against the federal administration. The law department has led and the city has led six different amicus briefs that were multi-city coalitions around the country, often with upwards of 70 different jurisdictions joining that coalition. So we've done that as part of a collaboration with others nationally. We've also joined 25 amicus briefs and federal rulemaking comments with similar coalitions. and we've supported at least two state cases. The state AGs have been leaders in this area as well and we've supported those cases where that's appropriate.

We've also dealt with investigations and defending the city in investigations by the federal government. And we've done things like supporting the drafting of the mayor's executive order that was announced in January. So with all of this, this is work that's happening across the law department. And unfortunately, we expect this work to continue for the next two and a half or three years.

Just before moving on I'll specifically point out that our Ongoing multi-jurisdictional work includes the preservation of more than $100 million for the city in federal grants, particularly related to housing, port security, and other things which is of course important to the committee. Thank you.

OK. Thank you very much. I appreciate both presentations. They were thorough. I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues who've been joined by Councillor Coletta Zapata. We'll go six minutes. Councillor Flynn, your time is now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the administration team that is here. Michael, let me start with you. I filed a 17F relating to some information I needed to get on Ruth Barclay, BHA Development. I haven't received it yet from BHA. I asked the state if they would help me as well. Do you know what the holdup is? I did send a letter to your office asking is Is BHA required to respond to a 17F? It's been since January.

Councilor, let me commit to getting back to you. I'm not, I think you're asking a legal question about the Council's authority to use 17F to compel a document from the Boston Housing Authority. But just as a general matter, we're happy to work with you to figure out what the documents are. So let me just take that back when this hearing is done, and we'll get right back to you.

It's about elevator situation at BHA developments, senior development, persons with disabilities. I just can't have elevators being broken and persons with disabilities are not able to get up and down I'm trying to get information from BHA and they're not providing that information to me. I have to do my due diligence as a district city councilor advocating for my constituents. I asked the Mass Architectural Access Board that oversees some of these issues for their guidance and suggestions, but I'd rather go through the city. But is this something you could ask BHA to work on to get me the answers that I need? Let us get back to you. Sure. Okay. I just don't want to keep waiting for this, though, Michael. Understood. Michael, you mentioned you drafted the

Are those contracts public record? Yes. Okay. To the chair, could I get a copy of the two contracts, the most recent one for the new fire commissioner, the Commissioner Burke, but also the police commissioner as well? I'd just like to take a look at them. Okay, we'll work with the administration to get those.

But those are public documents, are they? You know, Corporation Council says so. It must be true. I'll look into it.

Boston Public School Transportation. Is the City of Boston responsible to paying out when someone is injured by a BPS bus?

In the event of a claim that's brought against the Boston Public Schools, that claim would be might be handled by members of the legal team at the Boston Public Schools. It might be jointly handled with the litigation team that works here in this building. But the resources to draw upon and the authority to settle One entity, yes.

Okay. Have we settled, paid out to people that were injured, or is it TransDef that's the BPS contracting company or is it a combination of the two?

Well, it would depend on the individual matter, but there are certainly circumstances where both the Boston Public Schools and TransDev might be named as might be named in a lawsuit and then the city would represent the Boston Public Schools, the You know, in our capacity. And then the claim against Transdev would be handled by Transdev attorneys. And that's not an uncommon arrangement that you might see in a huge variety of

Well, maybe over the last five years, Mr. Chair, I'd like to see how much Transdev paid out to people that were injured by by a BPS transportation related issue. And I'd also like, over the same period of time, how much Boston has paid out as well. I am concerned about BPS. Is there anything we should be concerned about trans-dev and settlements that, or their safety record, Michael?

Well, the law department played a role in the independent report. That was led by attorney Natasha Tidwell in the aftermath of the tragedy last year. and the death of a BPS student, Len Joseph. Members of the City Law Department and the BPS Office of the Legal Advisor have been in ongoing conversations with the BPS Transportation Department That was an important area of recent and ongoing focus.

I have lost complete faith in Transdev. I've been a city councilor for eight years. I follow these issues very closely. I have lost complete faith in them. Our BPS students deserve better. Mr.

Chair, I'll wait for the next round. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Murphy.

Thank you all. I'll start. Just thank you, Jody. I know we've had several hearings. Before this budget season started, the most recent one about the residency program, so just thank you for that. I don't really have any specific questions for your department, but thank you for always being so available. And I see Kevin here in the crowd. I just want to shout out Kevin. Thank you. I know we just had a very successful youth jobs and resource fair. And I know that you put a lot of effort, you and your team. So thank you for that much needed work. So my questions will be more just to the law department. The presentation shows that about 25% is going to outside counsel. What's the exact dollar amount that we've spent on outside counsel last year and if you have the list of the three firms that received the most money and for what types of cases?

We spent $2.6 million, $2.623 million with outside counsel. The largest firms in terms of the amount spent in FY26 include Stoneman Chandler, Nixon Peabody, and Cahill Gordon. I'll have to, but we can get back to you on the specific representations. Most of these are longstanding outside council relationships that Under the claims and property damage trends,

It says we've in page five, there was a claims division. Can you provide the data on the number and cost of property damage claims over the last five years in which departments? or cause generate the highest number of claims?

Sure. We can get back to you on that.

Okay. You don't have any of that information now? And are there repeat locations or repeat contractors in any of our driving claims?

The, in many cases, these claims are, because the city is, Thank you. Again, I Thank you. Thank you. Large enterprise with the kind of ongoing physical footprint out in the world that we have, fire engines and narrow streets and

All sorts of things that there is a certain amount of this work that needs to be done and is very much in the interest of residents that we're doing this work effectively, efficiently.

Are there repeat locations or accidents? Do you keep that data?

I'll need to get back to you on sort of how this is tracked by the department versus by the individual sort of department that's the, you know, and D.D. against which the claim arises, but we can get back to you.

Council Flynn touched on it and you mentioned that when BPS and Transdev are in accidents, there's times when We work jointly. That BPS does have a legal department. But when and how often does the city's law department step in and work alongside BPS's law department?

Just to clarify, there's only one law department. The Office of the Legal Advisor at the Boston Public Schools is part of the city's law department. And just to further clarify my earlier comment, the city would handle claims against the city, including claims against the district. There are There are statutory caps on the claims that can be brought and we'll handle the matters as we would professionally, empathetically, and expeditiously.

The Department has defended claims worth tens of millions of dollars. What is our current total liability exposure from pending cases? How much is tied specifically to property damage and claims?

Our property damage cases, again, fall under statutory caps established in law, depending on the nature of the claim. And by and large, Councilor, although perhaps not with some exceptions, The sort of claims that rise into the millions of dollars that you're referencing are generally The largest potential liabilities for the city at this moment Limited exception are going to be for wrongful conviction related cases stemming from actions often taken decades ago. Generally where there's a, and you are aware of this, but oftentimes where there's been a successful motion for a new trial and the decision not to.

So they come back to us for a claim. What are the top three highest risk cases right now in front of the city?

We have a, there are a range of matters of this nature that are pending and we'd be happy to discuss the sort of state with you. We are not We'd be happy to get back to you with the information that we're able to share, although I can't get into specific cases that are in active litigation.

Oh, I'll follow up with you. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. Councilor Coletta Zapata. I'm sorry. You're up.

Thank you, Chair. Good morning, everybody. I apologize that I was late. Just thank you for your work. Lawyers in public service and advocacy spaces are literally holding up democracy right now. Thank you very much. And just a lot of respect and admiration for everything that you all do. Some of my questions have already been asked. We had talked about estimated cost savings. You mentioned the preservation of federal grants. At 120 million. I'm just wondering if you have another number or if it's a larger number through the negotiations or of lease agreements or Winning litigation or suing the Trump administration, does it go beyond the 120 number in terms of cost savings and what you've been able to save the city?

Certainly there's, and I'll defer to my colleagues to weigh in further, that the hundred plus million dollars that we referenced really just relates to federal grants that we, that The city's position has been that we're entitled to this money and that it's been held up or You know, messed with in one way or another by a lawless federal government. And we've intervened successfully multiple times at this point to ensure that the city and its departments received those funds to deliver necessary services to residents. But consistent with the questions just a moment ago from Councilor Murphy, the Work of the law department on a daily basis involves contesting or settling claims against the city, lawsuits against the city that

and many more. Retaining an expert team that is familiar with the particulars of municipal lawyering and defense in this moment has an impact of tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis and we're very proud of the team and their work.

Public records request. There was some attention brought to this matter a couple years ago, and there were going to be some reforms. Is there anything that you can talk about that's changed as it relates to public records requests and the timeliness that they're provided to the public?

The our colleagues from the Our colleagues who recently, I think, published a report or shared a report with the council on some of these matters, but the law department plays an important role here in aspects of The major change that the Council is aware of is that in just the last We've seen, I think, a tripling of the number of records requests that are received by the city and its departments, including the Boston Police Department. We're at, I think, something like 10,000 records requests per year, which puts this sort of this work into a sort of totally

Unfunded is not maybe quite the right way to put it, but this is a new obligation on cities and towns across the Commonwealth with no precedent or expectation at the time that these laws were passed and where the The way that we have changed how we work, the number of documents that are produced just in the day to day course of normal municipal business, the scale of the files, particularly when you add in things like of the United States, and many more. No relation to the expectations in the 1970s when many of these laws were first originated. And so it is managing that work, attending to it, staffing it appropriately at the departmental level and at the city. is a significant strain on resources. I believe that the work that we have done collectively as a department and as a city enterprise

Speed up the timeliness of response, ensure that we're meeting our statutory deadlines, and that we're only availing ourselves of exemptions when lawfully sort of able and appropriate. is work that the city should be proud of. There aren't necessarily going to be people out there in the world saying, great job, city of Boston, for increasing the timeliness of your responses or handling those 10,000 records requests in the way that you have. I do think it's an area where city leadership and the council should be proud of the work that the city has done.

Great, and thank you. I'm sorry, I only have a little bit of time, so if you can make this like yes or no. I'm sorry. No, and I appreciate, again, I appreciate your thoughtful and comprehensive answer. Has there been, because it's a broad problem I think all municipalities are going through right now with the Increase in public records request. Has there been any sort of guidance or support coming from maybe like the Secretary of State's office or the state on this to help us out a little bit?

I think there are ongoing conversations about how to ensure that we are meeting our obligations. I think this is a topic where there's increasing awareness that the scale of request and the complexity of request has expanded exponentially in recent years and it is a worthy topic for further discussion by policymakers.

Thank you. We talked about outside counsel. You aren't able to talk about what the broad expertise is of who we've brought in through Nixon, Peabody, Cahill, Gordon, what they've been used for?

I can speak a little bit to it, and I'll do so briefly. First, let me say, the goal of the department, by and large, as an in-house law firm, is to manage as much of the legal work of the city as possible in-house. There are other in-house councils working at companies and nonprofits where the The person in my function, the general counsel, their job basically is to outsource everything and then just sort of superintend that work in a limited fashion. That's not how we're staffed. We're staffed to manage for the lion's share of the legal work of the city, and that is what we do. We have found it necessary to avail ourselves of outside counsel. We are trying to bring down our spending on outside counsel as we reduce those vacancies. And that's ongoing work that Kristen, Sam, Susan Wisey, Keith Lederman, and others are deeply involved in, as are our division heads.

Just to take... Stoneman for a moment. They have handled certain complex employment matters in partnership with in-house lawyers for some decades. Similarly, Nixon, Peabody, a couple of the matters that have driven outside spending or employment matters. Stoneman also collaborated with the Office of Legal Advisor in the recent defense of the and so forth.

So, there's some variation here. federal response actions that we've taken or is that all in-house?

The majority of that work is in-house. We've got some small, we've done some smaller contracts. For example, one of our slides noted an unprecedented inquiry by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, basically suggesting that the work that the city has done to advance a fair housing agenda over the last 25 years is itself unconstitutional and unlawful. The Department, the Mayor's Office of Housing has had a collaborative relationship with HUD since the founding of HUD and so we We're unfamiliar with this kind of inquiry, although we've had a productive dialogue. But an adversarial posture from HUD was new. And so we consulted with a firm in crafting the city's most recent response.

Some questions from the chair and then we'll go for a second round. So is there, other than the response, I think that we got a, there was a letter from HUD and we issued a response. Has there been anything else on that?

Not as yet.

Okay. And then... I think the contextual data from how other cities in the region and nationwide, what their law departments look like, I'm assuming that's you know to show how we're punching above our weight or our log department is and there this is you know please don't look for you know cuts here because we're already way smaller than these other other similar I just was wondering if there's a historical reason for why Boston would have a smaller law department. Are there any restrictions on our restrictive home rule here? This isn't a recent development. Is there any, now that you've taken the reins, Is there any historical context to that?

It's certainly true that the department has been of a smaller scale. I don't yet have a good understanding of exactly why. I agree with the councilor's observation that we are a sort of lean mean fighting machine.

Yeah, okay. and then you mentioned so were defendants in a case brought by the federal government over our sanctuary city status the same thing same kind of case they brought against Chicago and of Illinois, and I think Cook County. I'm not sure if there are any others, but can you just remind us what's at stake in that case? Are there If the federal government prevails, what happens?

Yeah, I'm going to turn it over to Sam Denning, who's actually leading our work in defense of the Boston Trust Act, to take that question.

Sure, the federal government is essentially asking us to, seeking to have the court invalidate the Trust Act and not allow the city to continue its compliance with the Trust Act. They're specifically taking issue with our detainers, the fact that the city does not honor detainer requests from the federal government, as well as information sharing provisions in the Trust Act. So that's what they're looking for is to essentially invalidate those provisions.

OK. Because I know there was an executive order from the president, the federal government, that Any city with a sanctuary city policy would not receive any federal funding? Is there litigation going on now about that? What's the status?

Yeah, there's been similar matter. There's been... Similar efforts like the one you've just described issued several times. Efforts to defund our cities entirely, efforts by individual departments to do so, efforts to attach conditions to various grants. And just to elaborate on one comment from Sam just a moment ago, the broader effort, of course, is not just about the sort of technicalities of the Trust Act and the way in which the Boston Police Department As you know, the police department cooperates with all levels of law enforcement on a daily basis and has and will continue to do so. The issue is whether or not the city is willing to turn over the Boston Police Department to actively participate in mass deportation, which the

which the City Council and the Police Department have independently determined is both contrary to our laws and contrary to our public safety policies.

And I'll just add briefly, other context there, this is, as you know, one of many attacks on so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. The city is a plaintiff in a lawsuit led by the City and County of San Francisco challenging certain sanctuary so-called sanctuary executive orders that the federal government issued early in the administration. What we saw in Minneapolis is another version of this. of trying to compel specific attacks on cities and city policies where we have independent rights protected by the Constitution.

Okay, and then I'm running out of time for both offices in terms of the, both of you are experiencing cuts or decreases in your budget. For the law department, I think it's $150,000. Is that to the non-personnel? Is that contractual services? And what's the impact? Or what will the impact be?

I mean, the most immediate impact is that we're We're trying to tighten our belts on outside council spending so we're having less of an impact on our personnel spending and we're sort of We are a part of central services for the city. The city's fiscal position requires belt tightening across the board. We are We are going to rise to the occasion to deliver within the budget that's been recommended.

Okay, and then for Jody, I guess, what's the dollar figure and where's that going to come out? I think it's contractual services, but then what's the impact on your...

It is $27,000-ish coming from contractual services, largely just impact the number of free health and safety trainings and the amount of multilingual workers' rights training we can provide.

Okay, and just one quick question before I'm done for Jody. I guess there was an article today about the delivery driver, you know, registration insurance ordinance, and I guess One thing I think I brought up in the hearings is for acquiring insurance, I don't want to see DoorDash deduct that money or require the delivery drivers to pay for that insurance. I think it would I think they're misclassified as independent contractors, and that would be a deduction from their wages. It's like deducting costs illegally from your employees. Can the city do anything or at least be on the lookout for that?

I'll definitely I don't think the intention is to have, you know, sort of

Minimum wage earning workers pay for their own insurance. It's that these large delivery companies would Flynn, we're going to go for a second round. We'll do five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to go back to TransDef again and BPS-related issues. We had a hearing on it recently, but need to get some more information. But Boston In TransDef, they pay insurance for the drivers. Was there a period of time that that insurance lapsed for any particular reason?

Councilor, not to my knowledge, but I'm afraid I'm not able to speak expertly on these questions. I'll do my best.

Okay, who would help me on that question?

We're happy to follow up on specific questions on this topic.

Yeah, but what BPS is the point of contact on that?

Questions about TransDev's insurance coverage?

Yeah.

Well, if... Without specifying a particular name, I think if the counselor has follow-up questions and you're not getting answers about the transitive contract or the ways in which we're managing for I'm happy to have those questions directed my way or through IGR and then we can figure out how to best respond.

Okay. So from a legal point, if there's an accident, Someone is injured whether it's a BPS student or the public for a BPS bus. What is the legal requirement Boston needs to do in terms of notifying Certainly, they're going to notify the Boston Police if there's an accident or a crash, but who else would be notified besides the Boston Police in terms of any type of regulation agency?

Sorry, I just want to make sure. I think what you're asking is in the event of a school bus accident. Yep. And so the first I should say that I think that there are, I believe that there are different protocols depending on the nature of the accident. If it's a sort of a side mirror swipe issue versus something more serious. But these are questions that I think would be probably best directed to the leadership of BPS Transportation. I know you've met Dan Rosengarten and Jackie Hayes before. But I'm happy to take that back.

Okay. But in terms of—that's what I'm getting at. But besides, if it's—with the exception of a minor— Fendabender, or any type of small accident. But if there's a major accident, knowing that the city law department is going to be involved, is there, besides the Boston police, maybe the district attorney, maybe the Mass Attorney General's Office, but do we have a responsibility to inform any type, and TransDef, do we have any legal responsibility to inform the state for any particular reason? They may compile data. Do we have an obligation to file data with the federal government that tracks these types of crashes too?

I know that we've I know from some previous work that we have ongoing data sharing about transportation with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. I know that there's information shared with the Registry of Motor Vehicles but I Again, you're asking a very specific question, and I just don't want to answer it accurately.

Okay. One question I wanted to ask, are you familiar with the Boston public market across the street?

I am. I go there for lunch.

Okay. Does that receive any type of city or state assistance at all?

It wouldn't surprise me if the public market has received grants of one form or another in the past. I'm not aware of any existing contracts for the Boston public market. I know that the market was created in a significant sort of State Partnership and that there was public dollars that were deployed to create the space that we enjoy today. Okay.

I know at one time it used to be it used to be BRA property. I believe it used to be BRA Property.

That wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know.

Okay, okay. I'm just trying to do a little bit of, I just want to be more knowledgeable on that. How much have we spent, Michael, in terms of Boston paying out to victims or to someone that sued the city over the last four or five years? in terms of settlements or by order of a judge.

Councillor Murphy, Earlier in the round asked a similar question, just about sort of a five-year look back on payouts of claims and settlements. Again, I think what you would find is that Thank you. Thank you. One or two cases that are those wrongful convictions, civil rights related cases that I mentioned, where the fact pattern, generally speaking, follows a successful motion for a new trial A non-prosecution decision by the district attorney's office. and then a specific claim brought by an individual who may have spent a long period of time incarcerated. Those cases are going to shift that number significantly, just one or two cases.

The claims for property damage, employment related claims, things like that are much more stable and at a significantly lower scale.

Mr. Chair, I know I'm out of time. May I ask one more question? Yes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So just as an example, say Boston pays out $10 to $25 million a year. Does the city pay that out or is the insurance company responsible for paying it out? Is it a combination of both? Or is there any other organization that is involved in it? and maybe if I could have that on the record also, that answer, but do you have anything you could say publicly at this meeting?

Yeah, the city doesn't have insurance. for these claims. We don't have an insurer.

We're self-insured. So we paid $25 million.

Well, no, there's a significant variation, and again, stemming from just a couple of cases. Again, without getting too in the weeds on the specific nature of wrongful conviction cases, so-called, they are in a category by themselves that Are there harassment cases in there?

You know, private settlements, sexual harassment or or some other type of harassment.

Well, I'm including everything. So so, you know, a sort of.

But I don't want to downplay the downplay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Are those public? Are you able to let us know about those? Or just the funds?

Again, happy to get back to you with the Settled Claims Against the City, which Councilor Murphy also requested. So we'll make sure to get those back to you. And we'll provide it at the level of transparency that is That is, you know, that is lawful.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, yeah, just a couple follow-ups before we go to Councillor Murphy. So, in terms of, like, non-disclosure agreements, and is there a rule in place? Can we have a non-disclosure agreement as part of a settlement from our end? Could a victim ask for a non-disclosure agreement? How do those?

I can't speak to past practices but Now, let's say there's a settlement. That settlement might... you know, that's gonna be what it is. And so there may or may not be lots of detail in the, You know, in the settlement, whether it's court entered or not. But again, we're happy to provide this to the council. We're trying to do this work in a transparent fashion that's the best interest of the taxpayer.

You know, I'm just raising the sort of counterfactual where victims' advocates sometimes want nondisclosure agreements for various reasons, but I don't know what the What the rules are, and generally I feel like I mean, there was a public proceeding, and we read about it, and it is public record. I think when we're paying out funds, Murphy.

Thank you. A few questions, but I'm going to just stay on the 17F and the RFI request. It seems to me that we've been saying for a few years now that we're just getting more requests for information and more of these records requests. Thank you. Thank you. Even say during our hearings, and we put RFIs on the record last year, we had hundreds, hundreds, not just a few, hundreds of the councilors' RFIs were unanswered. And many of our 17 Fs are unanswered. to follow up on Councillor Flynn's specific question he was asking about Transdev on

April 1st we had a City Council hearing with the Transportation Department and I had asked several specific questions about their insurance and at that hearing they did raise the Non-renewal regarding the non-renewal of the transportation liability insurance. And so I did file a 17F after RFIs were put on the record. Neither one has been answered. And that was... I switched, you know, I put in a 17F. And as a councilor, back on April 8th, still waiting for the answers to that. And those would give the answers that I know Councilor Flynn was just saying. So I get it's frustrating for the public when they know that we have a small department. And I know they work hard up there. If the public's waiting for thousands of unanswered public records requests and then we on the council still have outstanding RFIs and what they say we do have the power through the 17F but they're just not answered.

So how do we get those? To be answered, at least have the councillors be prioritized. At what point does the law department step in to make sure that happens?

The arrangement for The arrangement sort of outlined in our charter for transmitting information from the mayor and city departments to the council is well established, as the councilor knows.

Right, seven days, and it's often, though, not followed.

I think the... I can't speak specifically to the transportation issue there. I know that... My experience on this topic, both in my previous role and then as corporation counsel, seems to be that where there's dialogue with the counselor or the counselor's office about what the What you're trying to learn and we can make sure that we're sort of pinpointing it to the best of our ability that often aids city departments.

There have been conversations and also in this specific case with all of my outstanding ones with the council president who had assured me she would work directly with IGR and get these answers and still nothing and there's several so we can follow up after on the specifics but But it's not just specific to me, like when I shared last year on the council floor that hundreds of RFIs are going unanswered. That's just unacceptable, especially when you take the time to come prepared to answer us questions and we need this information. Before the June vote, right? I mean, all these questions are tied around making sure we have answers to vote on a budget that will deliver the services. I'm hoping we could talk after about getting...

Very happy to, and we share the... I think we share a common goal.

Awesome. Thank you. So the specifics... We talked about the cost in trying to maybe shift more in-house so we spend less on outside council. What specific positions would be added to reduce the need for outside council? I know you did say that There are times when there's like a very specific case, like the redistricting, like you reached out to a firm that was expertise in certain very specific, What does that look like? What more staff would we add? Because I'm all for adding a department's budget if it means overall the city's spending less.

I think where we are right now, is we're focused within the recommended budget to bring down our outside counsel spending by filling the vacancies in our legal advisor's offices and in litigation.

Can you share, because you did mention, Kristen, that there are, was it nine outstanding positions right now? And which ones are those? Are they just general attorneys or specific roles?

There's specific positions that sort of, you know, at this immediate moment, we have a couple of litigation positions that's important for sort of mitigating against our outside council spending. We have an open position in public facilities, an open position with inspectional services, an open position with the police department.

Is it common to have this many open positions?

Well, it's interesting. As I was reviewing our budget testimony, I did look at the notes from my predecessor, Adam Cederbaum's notes from last year, and our vacancy levels were We've been making a particular effort to address them within the context of the existing sort of fiscal situation and that conversation is very active with the, you know, and we're We're pleased to be able to move forward with those.

Could you just quickly describe if, say, ISD, you mentioned, is down, attorney, what does that mean? Someone else picks up the work if needed? and just works harder or shifts other work aside.

As you're aware from your own office, we do a combination of things. We stretch to meet the workload. There's a huge amount of non-discretionary work. Thank you. Thank you. where we're sort of unable to manage it given that we're Dealing with litigation that has deadlines that are imposed by courts and others that's where we sometimes find ourselves spending with outside counsel. Again, I think it is a It is a core priority for the department to maintain, to do two things simultaneously, which is first to live within our means.

and to bring down our outside council spending consistent with the budget request.

Thank you. Okay. Thanks. I guess just before we move on to Councilor Coletta Zapata, Just in terms of the 17F and the Transdev, I'm not asking for how those cases play out in other context, like in the past. I guess like the assumption is that I think is that Transdev is liable for, you know, accidents. I think Transdev is like an administrator. I think we employ the drivers. Is Transdev liable? Have they paid out in the past? for accidents. So I'm just, and is there a dispute?

Without making a legal conclusion about liability, let me say the following. In the recent tragedy that we're all referencing, and I, too, had a kindergartner in the Boston Public Schools at the same time, so... The city has resolved its claims stemming from that matter. There are, I believe, still active claims against Transdev, which is, as our contracted and Transportation Provider, the employer in that case. That's an unusual arrangement within the context of city services given that the just

It is not exactly unique, but the employment relationship of our school bus drivers as employed by Transdev is distinct from many core city services. Thanks, that helps.

Okay, Councillor Coletta-Zapata.

Thank you so much. I just have two additional questions that I believe would be quick. The Property Damage Revolving Fund—sorry, this is really silly—what funds that?

The revolving fund takes in recoveries where the city pursues claims against entities that damage city property. So just to again go back to a Murphy, and Councilor Flynn raised earlier. Let's say a city tow damages somebody's vehicle inadvertently, right? There might be a claim brought against the city for the damage, right? directly by the individual resident or by the insurance company for the individual, whoever's, you know, their Geico or what have you. In the reverse case where it's a city vehicle, That's damaged through the fault of a third party or city property, a fence, a tree, a building that's damaged.

The City can pursue recoveries and when those recoveries are pursued successfully, they come into this revolving fund and then they're redeployed to support those departments.

Okay. And we have enough to sustain the amount of claims that come in per year?

Our claims department, and there's some variation depending on the facts and circumstances, but we're prepared to pursue what we would call affirmative claims by the city as well as to defend claims against the city.

Okay, thank you. Let's see. For execution of courts at this point in the fiscal year, have we needed to provide a supplemental appropriation to that?

That is a That's a better question for our budget office, which is to say I'm not able to speak expertly on this, but I know that they are managing for our settlements consistent with the ongoing sort of fiscal management at the fourth quarter of the fiscal year.

Okay, thank you. And last question for Jody. You ready to pass the wage theft ordinance?

We're ready.

Great. Thank you to Chair Weber for his leadership on that. And we're really looking forward to it. Thank you, everyone, for your collaboration and partnership. Appreciate it.

For all of our sakes, I hope. This baby is patient and waits till it's due date. Okay, do we have a third round, Councilor Flynn? I just, so in terms of vacancies, we briefly mentioned, I guess, Jody, how many vacancies are there? Any? None?

None in legal compliance.

Okay. Tell us your secret, Jody.

Yeah. Our secret is that we have... Just the Boston Resident Child's Policy. We have 16 staff, so.

Yeah. Okay. And then for law department, how many positions are vacant?

Nine currently.

Nine out of how many?

75.

75, okay. And then so what steps are we taking to fill those? I think there's some law schools around here.

Yep, for every single position, we post very actively to... to different listservs. We work with affinity bar associations. We work with law schools that have public interest advising offices. We're in active conversation with the Boston Bar Association and legal The organizations, and we have a broad network of outside council and alumni, and we're sort of constantly on the lookout for new talent. We think it's a great place to work. Our colleagues in the law department are fantastic public servants. They do expert legal work. It's a great place to be for a stage of a career.

As an attorney, you worked in the Attorney General's office. I don't know how rewarding government work can be. I think we have talked about the Boston Law Department's and so forth. I don't know if it's about reputation or maybe it's partly because we're a small I think some law grads might be looking at other places like New York or, you know, I don't know, for some reason Denver seems to have half of the municipal lawyers in the country, but how we can be that sort of place where people are looking to come to work.

It's an ongoing effort for the department. I think in this moment where cities are seen as a level of government, And I think this reflects our collaboration with the council where work that impacts people's lives is actually happening, where there is a greater trust in government. attorneys that are interested in building a career in public service are increasingly looking and we're hoping to take advantage of that.

And I think we're seeing how important it is to You know, win these fights with, like, the Trump administration and things like that, things you can fight for. Just, Jody, in terms of the budget for FY27, When we codified the office, there's an advisory council that is supposed to be formed, and I think that we're looking to do that. After, you know, hopefully we can pass the wage theft ordinance and get that going. Is there anything in the budget that concerns you about your ability to convene that advisory council?

No, in fact, we've been working already, Monique and I, to lay out the process, identify potential members. So as soon as the wage theft ordinance moves forward, we'll be ready to start pulling the advisory committee together We have a plan for staffing.

OK. Just one second. 1,000. No, I'm just kidding. Nobody's signed up. No follow-up questions. No. Councilor Murphy, Councilor Flynn. Thank you very much for coming in this morning and answering questions and your presentation. This morning's hearing is now adjourned.

Thank you.