BOSTON — Boston's City Council voted 9-3 Wednesday to keep every dollar of the $43,000 pay raise Mayor Michelle Wu received this year — and the $21,500 the Council slid into its own pockets — while Wu's $4.9 billion FY27 budget hacks Boston Veterans Services by 14 percent and zeroes out the federal grant line that paid for firefighter cancer screenings.

The pay-cut resolution was filed by Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy — framed as shared sacrifice while residents brace for service cuts. The only councilor who joined them was Miniard Culpepper. Julia Mejia abstained. Gabriela Coletta Zapata was absent. Everyone else voted to keep the money.

The most jaw-dropping defense of the no-vote came from District 8 Councilor Sharon Durkan — Wu's most reliable rubber-stamp on the council — who justified the $125,000 Council salary by suggesting that paying councilors less would push them toward corruption.

"We had a Council colleague... there was some corruption that took place on this body," Durkan said. "I do not want anyone that serves in this body to not be able to afford their life and to go towards something that's really dark and negative."

The "Council colleague" Durkan invoked: former District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, the corrupt ex-pol who pocketed taxpayer cash in a City Hall bathroom-stall kickback. Federal prosecutors busted Fernandes Anderson for giving a staff member — described as a relative — a $13,000 bonus on the condition that $7,000 of it get slid back to her in cash. The handoff was coordinated by text and carried out in a City Hall bathroom in June 2023. She pleaded guilty in 2024, did a month in federal prison, and resigned from the Council after her conviction.

Durkan's logic, in plain English: pay the political class enough that they don't have to steal from the taxpayers.

The Council's salary when Fernandes Anderson was running her bathroom-kickback scheme was $103,500. Her financial disclosure that year showed her $19,000 in debt and staring down an impending $5,000 ethics fine for hiring her sister and her son onto her Council staff and handing them raises.

The Boston City Council salary today is $125,000 — a 20 percent raise since January 2024.

The latest U.S. Census Bureau data show Boston's median household income is $97,344. The poverty rate: 16.6 percent.

The Council is now paid 28 percent more than the median Boston household. Sharon Durkan's argument is that even that salary is insufficient protection against members stealing from City Hall bathrooms.

For the record, Wu vetoed the 2022 legislation that created the raises. The Council overrode her veto 9-4. Wu has not since pushed to repeal it, and has not given the raise back.

Councilor Ed Flynn, whose earlier push for a Council ethics committee was killed by his own colleagues during the Fernandes Anderson scandal, was blunt.

Murphy added that the Council has seen a roughly 20 percent raise since the 2022 legislation took effect — while other city employees (police, fire, public works, teachers) get raises of 1.5 to 2 percent a year under their collective bargaining agreements.

"Rescinding the salary increases for elected officials would send a clear message that the city's priority must be preserving essential services, supporting our frontline workers, protecting vulnerable residents, and investing in the people and programs that serve Boston neighborhoods," Murphy said.

The Council vote on the FY27 budget is due no later than Wednesday, June 10.