Boston city councilors vow to resign over Mayor Wu's proposed $724,000 veterans' budget cut

Lance Reynolds, Boston Herald on May 14, 2026

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BOSTON — A pair of Boston city councilors are vowing to walk away from the job if Mayor Michelle Wu doesn’t fully restore her proposed 14.6% cut to the city’s veterans budget.

The proposal to slash $724,000 from the veterans’ services office has sparked outrage among councilors, former service members, and EMTs who favor a full restoration but argue that it shouldn’t take money away from other departments.

Councilor Ed Flynn, a U.S. Navy veteran who served 24 years, including in Operation Enduring Freedom, called the 14% reduction “significant.” But he said that he’d be “equally outraged” if the mayor looked to cut 25 cents from the budget.

“I would rather resign from my job as a city councilor than vote (for) any budget that hurts veterans,” Flynn said at Thursday’s hearing. “That’s how serious I am about what is taking place today. I am embarrassed … what the city of Boston did, cutting veterans’ services.”

Councilor Erin Murphy, who choked up earlier in the hearing, echoed Flynn’s threat to resign: “I also would rather give up my job than take a vote,” she said, “and maybe I will be outvoted, that makes any cuts, especially where it’s so small.”

The proposed cut to veterans’ services is among the hottest issues this budget season at City Hall, with the City Council backing a resolution for Wu to restore the “devastating” spending reduction.

Wu’s office has defended the mayor’s decision, stating that there won’t be cuts to direct services for veterans and that the reduction reflects broader fiscal constraints facing the city amid a budget crunch.

Robert Santiago, the city’s commissioner of veterans’ services, said Thursday that the proposed cuts won’t affect his office’s ability to carry its current caseload next year.

Areas that would be affected, Santiago said, include the office’s “Bridge the Gap Mini-Grant Program,” which shares funds with nonprofits that support local veterans through projects covering housing, transportation, health, economic mobility and education.

The planned cuts would also affect the office’s non-personnel expenses, such as city-branded clothing, other promotional items and event supplies and rentals, the mayor’s office has said.

“But any cut like that, it may or may not have an impact,” Santiago said in response to a question from Council President Liz Breadon on whether homeless veterans would be affected.

Wu has proposed a $4.22 million budget for the office next fiscal year, compared to $4.94 million this year, a 14.6%, or $723,753 reduction. Meanwhile, the mayor’s entire city budget request of $4.9 billion would increase current spending by 2.1%.

Murphy said that veterans’ services is one of the smallest funded departments in the city, and any cut would be “unacceptable.”

“This is hard,” Murphy said, fighting through tears. “I am a mom of a soldier who is deployed. … When we have a couple of hundred thousand dollars that’s cut, we can fix that, we can do better, and we should do better.”

Dan Magoon, a Dorchester resident who heads the Massachusetts Fallen Heroes nonprofit, is demanding that the Wu administration “not balance the budget on the backs of our veterans.” He argues that there’s “plenty of waste, fraud and other bloated initiatives that could be cut” elsewhere.

Magoon, who completed three combat deployments between Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2007, recounted how 16 years ago, he warned the City Council that the city was failing veterans.

“The warning was ignored,” Magoon said. “Unfortunately, three administrations later, the slow erosion of veterans’ services and benefits has become normalized. … It’s not just the budget reduction, it’s the latest step in a systemic betrayal of those who’ve worn the uniform.”

Also catching smoke is a proposal from City Councilor Ben Weber, who chairs the council’s budget process, to slash money from the fire department to restore the mayor’s proposed cut to the veterans budget.

Jason Yutkins, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen Association’s EMS Division, which covers EMTs and paramedics, called Weber’s idea the “wrong approach.”

“It creates a false choice,” he said, “between supporting veterans or supporting public safety in believing that we can only support one over the other. We can, and we should do both.”