BOSTON — Sharon Durkan's job before she joined the Boston City Council was raising money for Michelle Wu. She did it for years. You'd think she'd know the rules by now.

State campaign finance regulators have flagged the District 8 councilor — for the second time in sixteen months — for accepting a contribution from a registered lobbyist that exceeded the legal cap. The violation remains formally outstanding on her record three weeks after the deadline to fix it.

A lobbyist named Michael Bergan made two donations to Durkan's committee in 2026: $200 on January 28 and another $200 on March 4. Combined: $400. State law caps lobbyist contributions at $200 per candidate per year. She blew through the cap by 100 percent in five weeks.

OCPF sent an audit letter on April 14 with a deadline of April 28 to refund the excess and file an amended report. That deadline passed. The violation is still open.

The contract behind the checks

This is where it gets interesting.

Bergan works for Tremont Strategies Group, a Boston lobbying firm. Their biggest City Hall client is JCDecaux, the global outdoor-advertising company that operates Boston's bus shelters, digital billboards, and self-cleaning toilets under a city contract that has generated over $36 million in revenue for Boston since it began. JCDecaux has been paying the firm $30,000 a year to lobby on that contract. The contract expires this year.

Sharon Durkan chairs the Boston City Council's Committee on Planning, Development and Transportation — the committee with direct jurisdiction over transportation and development matters. The lobbyist working to protect a bus shelter contract that falls under her committee wrote her two checks that exceeded the legal limit.

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That's the exact scenario the $200 cap exists to prevent.

Mayor Michelle Wu. Durkan served as Wu's finance director and chief fundraiser for years before running for council. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Second time in sixteen months

This isn't a one-off. OCPF flagged Durkan's committee for the exact same violation — excess lobbyist contribution — in December 2024. The committee resolved it with an amended filing. Then it happened again, with a different lobbyist at the same firm, doubling the limit this time.

Bergan isn't new to the rule either. His contribution disclosures show him hitting the $200 ceiling year after year for officials including Wu, Henry Santana, and John Fitzgerald. He knows where the line is. The 2026 double-up on Durkan has not been publicly explained.

The audit problem

The repeat violation sits at the back end of a much longer pattern. Durkan's committee has been flagged by OCPF 21 times since it was organized in 2023 — including 13 "Clarify Expenditure Information" letters in the past 18 months. State regulators have been writing her committee almost every month asking what her money is being spent on.

The councilor who blocked Boston's audit has an audit problem

This is the same Sharon Durkan who used a procedural maneuver to block Councilor Ed Flynn's resolution to audit roughly $100 million in city spending — telling her constituents that auditing Boston's books would waste the public's time.

Her own books, as it turns out, are the ones state regulators can't stop auditing.

As Mass Daily News reported earlier this week, Durkan raised $0 from donors in April — and still managed to spend $6,845 of donor money on rideshares, restaurants, and a $1,900 awards gala. Her committee is running a year-to-date deficit. Her donors have stopped writing checks.

The Durkan Committee and Tremont Strategies Group have not publicly addressed the audit letter.

Wu's longtime fundraiser turned Boston city councilor caught taking illegal lobbyist money

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