Wu's FY27 budget cuts Boston Veterans Services by 14.6 percent — roughly $400,000 off a line that sits between $2.5 and $3 million, and eleven times the average city departmental haircut, as Mass Daily News first reported.

Even as she's calling 14 percent austerity for veterans, Wu vowed multi-billion-dollar climate spending last month to fight what she called an "existential threat" to Boston.

The raise is the same one Wu vetoed in 2022 before the council overrode her veto 9-4. South Boston councilor Ed Flynn — Navy veteran, the only disabled veteran on the Boston City Council — is demanding she give it back and calling for further cuts to the mayor's own office, the press office, and the Office of Neighborhood Services.

Flynn's been at this for weeks. At a May 1 budget working session, he called the FY27 plan "one of the most disappointing" budgets in his nine years on the council. He named the people the cut would hit — "African-American veterans, women veterans, women combat veterans, disabled veterans" — and reminded his colleagues that he's the only one of them who fits in the last category.

It's not only veterans. Wu's budget also lost $1.4 million in federal firefighter cancer-screening money — funding that had paid for 587 skin-cancer screenings and caught two potential melanomas in the most recent year. When at-large councilor Erin Murphy filed a late resolution to restore the money, district 8 councilor Sharon Durkan — a Wu ally — objected on the spot and the resolution died.