BOSTON — This week, at City Hall, Councilor Erin Murphy stood up to file a late resolution to restore funding for cancer and health screenings for Boston's firefighters.
Before she could finish, District 8 Councilor Sharon Durkan — Mayor Michelle Wu's most reliable rubber-stamp on the council — objected.
Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan (left) with Mayor Michelle Wu at Fenway Park. Durkan has been Wu's most reliable yes-vote on the council.
The resolution died on the spot. No vote. No debate. No public hearing of what had been proposed.
Boston firefighters run into burning buildings full of synthetic foam, plastics, electronics, and household chemicals. All of it releases carcinogens when it burns. Every fire is an exposure. Career firefighters get cancer at rates well above the general public, and the earlier they catch it, the better their odds.
Boston firefighters face elevated cancer risk from repeated exposure to carcinogens released in modern structure fires.
Murphy's resolution was about funding the screenings. Catching it early. Durkan didn't want to hear it.
Not on the merits — on the procedure. Durkan cited Rule 33, the council rule that bars same-meeting adoption of any matter unless every councilor in the room agrees to suspend it. One objection kills the suspension. The resolution can't even be placed on the record.
The catch: Durkan forgets there are any rules when it's for herself.
Boston City Councilors Sharon Durkan (left) and Erin Murphy (right) at the Iannella council chamber podium. Source: Boston City Council meeting video.
She did the exact same thing herself — for Ozempic
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Ten months earlier, on July 9, 2025, Durkan walked into the same chamber with her own late-file emergency resolution — demanding the Healey Administration "protect access to life-saving GLP-1 medication." GLP-1 is the class of drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy.
Durkan was the lead sponsor. She personally moved to suspend Rule 33 — the very rule she would invoke against Murphy ten months later. It passed the same day.
And the original co-sponsor list, at the top of her own emergency resolution? Erin Murphy.
Page one of Durkan's July 9, 2025 emergency resolution. Erin Murphy is named in the co-sponsor list at the top. The body invokes "life-saving GLP-1 medication." Source: City of Boston filing.
The same Erin Murphy who, ten months earlier, had let Durkan put her name on the Ozempic emergency as co-sponsor. Murphy was the collaborative one. She helped Durkan suspend the very Rule 33 Durkan would later invoke against her.
Durkan did not return the courtesy. Not because she'd found principle in the meantime. Durkan votes the way Mayor Michelle Wu's office votes — every time, on everything — and Wu's office has no appetite for restoring the firefighter cancer-screening line in this budget. Blocking Murphy's late file wasn't a procedural stand. It was a yes-vote for the mayor, dressed up as a no-vote on a council resolution.
The text of Durkan's GLP-1 resolution invokes the council's emergency exception. In her own filing language, she wrote that "an emergency declaration is hereby necessary" because of "unforeseen circumstances impacting the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of Boston."
Health, safety, and welfare of Boston residents. Her words. Weight-loss drug coverage qualified.
In January 2025 she'd pitched a two-cent-per-ounce sugar tax on Boston residents, framed as a public-health weapon against obesity. Two months later she started taking Wegovy herself and wrote about it in a personal Substack post titled "Massachusetts Should Lead in GLP," boasting she'd lost 50 pounds and felt "more myself than I have in years." Four months after that she filed the GLP-1 emergency to protect her coverage.
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This week, the firefighters' turn came up. The procedural courtesy was no longer available.
Murphy is done being polite. She blasted out a press release on Instagram, on official council letterhead, headed "Council Rules Should Protect Public Business, Not Block It."
"Personal feelings should never interfere with public business," she wrote. "Talking over me while I am trying to file a matter, then smiling afterward like blocking public business is some kind of victory, is not leadership. It is immature and unprofessional."
"Residents deserve timely action, not procedural games."
Durkan did not respond.
In the meantime, the firefighters will keep running into burning buildings.
They'll keep breathing the smoke, and for now, the cancer screenings look to remain paused.
At least Sharon Durkan still has her Ozempic — and it looks like she'll keep blocking late filings. Unless they benefit her in some way.
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