Kim Janey mum on budgetary changes as showdown continues

Acting Mayor Kim Janey is keeping her cards close to her chest as the stakes rise around the city’s budgets, with the acting mayor not saying whether the administration plans to submit a supplemental budget or make other specific changes in the face of council opposition.

“I’m confident that we will get there together,” Janey told reporters at an event Saturday morning, not directly answering a couple of questions about whether she’s planning a supplemental budget.

City councilors have spent the week criticizing the proposed $3.76 billion city operating budget and $1.3 billion schools budget, saying that both don’t “meet the moment” as the various councilors advocate for myriad and sometimes competing priorities.

Both budgets — particularly the schools — appear in an unusual amount of danger to fail to pass the council by Wednesday, the end of the fiscal year.

Councilors have called for Janey to make changes or introduce a supplemental appropriation order that would add funding in certain budgetary areas or plan out what to do with some of the hundreds of millions of dollars incoming from federal coronavirus aid packages.

On Saturday as Janey skirted the issue of specific changes to the budget, she too mentioned the big pandemic bucks and said in planning what to do with them, “We will continue to seek out the voice of the Boston City Council as well as our partners throughout the city to hear their voices.”

Janey defended the current budget proposal, saying of last week’s resubmission on the budget, “The resubmittal does a lot to make sure that we are focused on equity, even more than the original filing.”

Janey ticked off a range of issues, including “digital equity,” immigrant assistance, housing, jobs and police reform.

“All of those investments are in this budget, as well as many of the district priorities that many district councilors had,” she said, adding that she’s “confident” the budget will pass.

Janey declined to speculate on why the council is teeing off so much on her and the proposed budgets.

“I can’t speak to that — only the important investments that are in this budget,” Janey said.

Various councilors have complained that Janey isn’t meeting with them or including them in the budget process as much as she should be, or as much as past mayors have. There’s also the complicating factor that three of the 12 active councilors — Andrea Campbell, Annissa Essaibi-George and Michelle Wu — are running against her for mayor this year, and thus have the incentive to criticize her.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3je4X8I