BOSTON — The same week Boston was announced as one of 10 U.S. cities joining a Budapest-born European Pact of Free Cities under Mayor Michelle Wu, alongside Chicago and Seattle, and on the same Monday her Office for Immigrant Advancement was on Facebook recruiting an administrator to hand out mini-grants to nonprofits, Boston firefighters stand to lose $1.4 million in federal cancer-screening money. Her proposed FY27 budget does nothing to put it back.
And now one councilor is furious.
Murphy on the screenings
Boston At-Large Councilor Erin Murphy. Image: Boston City Council.
In a written statement Monday, Murphy, a former Boston public school teacher, walked through what the now-vanished federal cancer-screening grant had actually been doing for Boston firefighters: 587 skin-cancer screenings, 94 referrals, two potential melanomas caught. 711 comprehensive body scans, 637 high-risk cases, 413 cardiovascular issues identified.
"These screenings are working," Murphy said. "They are finding serious health concerns early, when firefighters still have a chance to act."
The average Boston firefighter, Local 718 has long warned, lives only a handful of years after retirement.
"Boston cannot treat firefighter health as optional or dependent on whether a grant comes through," Murphy said. "We cannot allow lifesaving screenings and health supports to lapse because outside funding was not awarded."
The cuts
A federal firefighter battles flames during a training drill. Image: U.S. Navy (public domain).
The federal grant Boston had been using to pay for the screenings was not renewed. The proposed budget does not replace the money.
Sam Dillon, president of Boston Firefighters Local 718, told the Boston Herald the union was "concerned that those benefits for our members may not be readily available." His shorter version: "Being a firefighter is the symptom."
The same proposal carries a $724,000 cut to the Office of Veterans' Services, a 14.6 percent reduction to a department that supports military families and surviving spouses citywide. The Boston City Council unanimously adopted a Murphy resolution last week telling Wu to put it back. The administration has not.
Councilor Ed Flynn, the chamber's only Navy veteran and an Operation Enduring Freedom servicemember, called the veterans cut "unconscionable" and co-sponsored Murphy's resolution.
Engine 8, four cancer diagnoses
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New Boston Fire Commissioner Rodney Marshall, whom Wu appointed in April, walked the council through the physical reality. The kitchen and living quarters at Engine 8, the 1948 firehouse at 392 Hanover Street in the North End that also houses Ladder 1, need to be moved away from the apparatus bay, the so-called hot zone where diesel exhaust and other carcinogens settle on every gear rack and every meal table.
Four firefighters out of the single Engine 8 / Ladder 1 company, Marshall told the council, have already been diagnosed with cancer.
Ben Weber's pitch
Boston City Councilor Ben Weber, chair of the Council's Ways and Means Committee. Image: City of Boston.
Enter the council's Ways and Means chair. Ben Weber, the man whose committee actually processes the FY27 budget, said his fix for the veterans cut was to carve $724,000 out of the Boston Fire Department's $336 million budget. His public reasoning: firefighters and veterans share a "deep connection."
Murphy had offered another path: dip into Boston's stabilization reserves. Weber rejected it, saying the move could jeopardize the city's AAA bond rating. So in his math, the reserves were untouchable. The AAA bond rating, untouchable. The $1.4 million in vanished federal cancer-screening money, unrecoverable. The fire department was where the bill had to come from.
"Why should firefighters be expected to carry the burden simply because many of them are veterans?" Murphy wrote.
Local 718 backed her. The union, Dillon said, "does not, by any means, support any reduction to the fire department budget to subsidize any other initiative for the City of Boston, including veterans' services."
Meanwhile, at MOIA, during a hiring freeze
Mayor Michelle Wu. Image: City of Boston.
Wu ordered a citywide "controlled and delayed hiring" freeze in December and, as the Boston Globe reported in March, a sweeping non-personnel spending freeze on top of it. Every vacancy in Boston now runs through her Personnel Review Committee. Police, fire and EMS academies got the carve-out. Nothing else did.
While Weber was telling the press the city had to make difficult choices, Wu's Office for Immigrant Advancement was on Facebook the same Monday.
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The Mayor's Office for Immigrant Advancement's Monday Facebook post, the same day the Council debated firefighter cancer screening and the veterans cut. Image: MOIA Facebook page.
The post invites applications for an "administrator to develop and facilitate the Fall 2026 Immigrants Lead Boston (ILB) program." The job description includes "overseeing participant payments and mini-grants to support local nonprofits involved in Project Activation."
Translation: someone to hand out grants to nonprofits.
No council hearing. No public-comment period. There is, however, a hiring page, in the middle of a citywide hiring freeze.
The federal-money track record
Critics have been arguing for over a year that the Wu administration mismanaged Boston's roughly $560 million allocation of one-time federal pandemic-relief money — using it to subsidize ongoing operating costs like the fare-free MBTA Routes 23, 28 and 29 pilot, which lives on ARPA reimbursement to the MBTA and is set to run out in June with no permanent funding source identified — instead of spending one-time money on one-time projects like equipment and capital repair.
And as MDN reported in April, one Boston Main Streets nonprofit, Three Squares Main Street, was caught submitting altered bank statements to the city to cover up misspent federal grant money. In one case, a $5.15 PayPal payment had been doctored to appear as a $2,301 Staples charge. Councilor Flynn has been asking the Wu administration for over a year whether the city has ever asked any organization to return misspent federal funds. He has not gotten an answer.
That is the track record. The new hiring page is for someone to hand out more grants.
What's next
The proposed budget is still moving through Ways and Means hearings before it goes to a full council vote. The council can amend or reject line items before final approval. Murphy is filing an emergency hearing order to find replacement funding before that vote, which is due by the second Wednesday in June.
"Our firefighters show up for us every day," she said in her statement. "We have a responsibility to show up for them."
The Wu administration had not, as of Monday night, publicly responded to the resolution, the cancer-screening lapse, or the question of why the Office for Immigrant Advancement is hiring while Boston firefighters are being told to expect less.
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