Tough decisions await City Council
Threat of layoffs, budget cuts loom
The year ahead for the Boston City Council promises to offer plenty of intrigue for political junkies, legal observers, and fiscal watchdogs.
Offering a prelude to a dramatic 2009, today's council meeting will be led by Councilor Chuck Turner, who two months ago was led away from City Hall in handcuffs on federal corruption charges.
In addition to decisions about whether the City Council should try to oust Turner, 2009 is an election year in which at least two councilors could challenge Mayor Thomas M. Menino; the city is facing dire fiscal straits with the threat of layoffs of police, firefighters, and teachers; and the council will be led by a new president who will be elected today.
"It's something I think not many people are looking forward to, but the reality is that we're elected to stand up and make bold choices, and people want to know where we stand," said Councilor John M. Tobin Jr. "There's a lot of political drama surrounding City Hall right now, with our colleague [Turner], with the impending mayor's race, and with the budget cuts."
The image of Turner gaveling to order a meeting of colleagues who will weigh whether to oust him from their membership comes because of a council rule. Turner is the oldest member of the City Council, a distinction that affords him the ceremonial honor of presiding over the year's first meeting, at which a new president is elected.
No councilors said they expect Turner to use his possession of the gavel today as an opportunity to chide them for embarking on a review of his actions that he insists is premature.
But the City Council will soon face the substantive decision of whether to take on Turner by urging him to resign or declaring him unqualified to remain a councilor.
The councilors are awaiting results from a review of the evidence against Turner by retired federal judge Charles B. Swartwood III. Councilor Maureen Feeney, the outgoing president, ordered the review, and Councilor Michael Ross, who is expected to be elected president today, said he supports the process Feeney put in place.
But other councilors, including Tobin, Michael Flaherty, Sam Yoon, and Charles Yancey, have already suggested that they believe Feeney was hasty in beginning the process since Turner has not yet been tried on charges that he took a $1,000 bribe from a Roxbury businessman and lied about it to investigators. Ross, a district councilor from Mission Hill, will have to navigate legally and politically choppy waters in dealing with Turner and the report from Swartwood.
"It definitely is a challenge, because Councilor Turner has already been convicted by the media," Yancey said, "and that places an awesome burden on the City Council in terms of how it responds to these allegations."
All of the councilors are up for reelection in November. And Yoon and Flaherty will probably soon end speculation over whether either of them will take on Menino, who still has not announced whether he would seek an unprecedented fifth term.
Yoon's candidacy appears ever more likely as end-of-year campaign finance reports show he more than doubled his coffers in a last-minute fund-raising blitz from $63,000 in mid-December to $132,000 on Dec. 31.
In recent appeals to donors, Yoon has said his decision to run would be based on whether he could raise enough money, pointing specifically to the $100,000 threshold that political observers have said would be necessary to make him look like a viable candidate to start the year.
Flaherty raised about $56,000 in the second half of December, to bring his campaign treasury to nearly $600,000, while Menino continued his fund-raising dominance, bringing in an additional $130,000 to raise his total to about $1.5 million.
Councilors say the specter of an intense election year make it likely the council, where Menino's proposals usually sail through, will become a platform for opposition to the mayor.
That especially will be the case if Menino offers a budget that proposes anywhere near the 200 police layoffs that officials told the Globe last week budget officials were weighing in light of revenue shortfalls.
"I don't think the City Council should be antagonistic toward the administration, but I also don't believe the City Council serves the public well by being a rubber stamp," Yancey said.
The expected budget cuts and the election also mean more people will be paying attention to what the council is doing this year, Tobin said.
"A lot of the political theater that happens on the fifth floor doesn't make one iota of difference in folks' everyday lives," he said. "What does make a difference is potential budget cuts to their kids' education, police, firefighters, public works, parks and libraries closing."
John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com. 