Three Council Information Orders Unanswered After Three Weeks, Councilor Says, Including One on BPS Spending

Boston City Councilor Erin Murphy has filed an order asking Mayor Michelle Wu to answer three formal information requests the council adopted on Sept. 30, saying that nearly three weeks later no responses have been provided and no one in the administration has acknowledged them or explained the delay.

The new order, on the agenda for the council's Wednesday meeting, invokes Section 17F of Chapter 452 of the Acts of 1948, the provision under which the council may formally request information from the mayor. Each of the three earlier orders asked for answers "within one week of receipt." The new filing asks for complete responses within one week and also requests "a complete accounting of all other outstanding Section 17F orders adopted by the City Council," including their docket numbers, dates of adoption, responsible departments, reasons for nonresponse and anticipated dates of completion.

"Section 17F is not a courtesy request," the order states. "It is a critical oversight authority granted to the Boston City Council, and that authority is meaningless if formally adopted requests can be ignored without consequence."

The council's legislative records show all three earlier orders, Dockets #1852, #1853 and #1854, were passed on Sept. 30 after the rules were suspended.

Two of them concern Boston Public Schools spending. On Aug. 26, the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General issued a report titled "Boston Public Schools - Procurements, Contracts, and Payments: Improper Workarounds and Oversight Failures Lead to Wasted Public Funds and Inaccurate Budget Reporting," according to Docket #1853. As summarized in that order, the Inspector General identified 26 findings, including improper payments, violations of state procurement law, vendor markups, excessive and duplicative shipping charges, contracts awarded without required competition, services performed without valid written contracts and circumvention of the city's residency requirement. The Inspector General found that at least $857,261 in public funds were spent improperly or in violation of state procurement law and cautioned that the investigation was limited to a small number of contracts identified through complaints, according to the order.

Docket #1853 asks for a status table addressing each of the Inspector General's 25 recommendations: whether it has been implemented, when, by whom, and if not, why not.

Docket #1852 focuses on a single case described in the report. According to the order, the Inspector General found that a senior environmental engineer in BPS Facilities Management moved from Boston to Connecticut and became ineligible to remain a BPS employee under the residency requirement, and that BPS then arranged for the engineer to keep doing substantially the same work through a consulting firm as a 1099 contractor, with assignments from BPS and timesheets approved by BPS staff. After that contract expired, the engineer continued to work for BPS from Connecticut while the district worked out how to pay for the work, and an invoice was later submitted through a different vendor to facilitate payment, the order says, citing the report. The order asks when BPS learned of the move, who was told, whether the Law Department or Human Resources was consulted, and whether any residency waiver was sought or granted.

The third order, Docket #1854, concerns the intersection of Tremont and Parker streets in Mission Hill, where a city transportation planner was fatally struck by a truck while riding a bicycle in July, WBUR has reported. In late August, safety advocates put down unsanctioned tape markings there to create an improvised bike lane, according to WBUR. Murphy's order says she wrote to "Chief Osgood, Mayor Wu, and Commissioner Gove" on Sept. 17 asking whether the markings were authorized, when the city learned of them and why they remained, and that she had received no response. The order requests the underlying communications, including those related to notifications on or around Aug. 30 and Sept. 11.

The city announced on Oct. 9 that it would install a bike lane separated from traffic by parked cars from Parker to Terrace Street, along with new white lines at the intersection and nearby, WBUR reported. Construction was expected to begin Oct. 13 and take about a week, and the advocates' tape was to be removed as part of the work. Osgood told WBUR the changes were designed to reduce the likelihood and severity of crashes.

Murphy's new order objects to that sequence. "The City has proceeded with making these roadway changes permanent without responding to the Council's formal request for the underlying records, explanations, and internal communications," it states. "Moving forward with a project does not eliminate the administration's obligation to account for its decisions or provide information already requested."

The filing describes the three orders as part of "a broader pattern of delayed or incomplete responses to Section 17F requests." In a Sept. 28 communication placed on file on Sept. 30, Murphy wrote that she had also filed requests under the Massachusetts Public Records Law for the same records, because "these matters are too important to allow the questions to simply remain unanswered." That communication said the Boston Globe editorial board had reported in August 2025, based on information from her office, that council members filed 422 requests for information over an eight-month period and fewer than half had been answered. It also said no administration representative appeared at a Human Services Committee hearing she chaired regarding the Blackstone Pool, though the administration had been invited.

Murphy acknowledged in that communication that the administration has said publicly its employees take part in a large number of council hearings and must balance those appearances with their other duties.

The new order urges colleagues to act together. "Regardless of our differences on other matters, Councilors should stand together in demanding timely and complete responses from the administration and be prepared to exercise the enforcement powers available to us when those requests go unanswered," it states. The order does not specify which enforcement powers it means.

The council meets at noon Wednesday.