Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's tax plan appeared to die in the Massachusetts Senate Monday night.
The Senate's number-three Democrat, Nick Collins of South Boston, declared Monday that the city should move forward to finalize its tax bills without Wu's controversial rebalancing plan, dealing a nearly fatal blow to the measure's prospects after yet another delay.
Later, Senate President Karen Spilka said in a statement that there was not enough support for the bill, announcing she would not take it to the floor for further debate.
Collins used a parliamentary maneuver to prevent any action on the proposal for the third straight session, in the process slamming what he described as a "campaign of fear and manipulation" by its supporters.
The final Boston City Council meeting of the year is scheduled Wednesday, and city officials expect action to set 2025 property tax rates. The council, mayor and city property owners may now have to deal with residential tax rates that will rise by more than they would have if the Legislature had fully embraced the mayor's bill.
Senate President Pro Tempore Will Brownsberger of Belmont, whose district includes parts of Boston, called for his colleagues to move on from the home rule petition and for the city to press ahead without it.
"Numbers matter. Now that we fully understand that Boston taxpayers are not looking at a 33 percent tax increase, but rather a 10% year-over-year increase, it is clear that we should lay this proposal aside," Brownsberger said on the Senate floor.
Asked after the session if Spilka shared his concerns, Brownsberger replied, "I think anybody can see that this bill doesn't have a lot of support."
There was one voice under the golden dome Monday who called for the bill's passage: Sen. Liz Miranda of Boston.
Casting herself in contrast to Collins and Brownsberger, Miranda said she supports the home rule petition "to protect residential property owners and tenants from what I believe is a property tax increase that, to some, feels like the sky is falling."
"Families in my district across age groups and incomes are struggling to stay afloat in the city we love," Miranda said. "They cannot afford a property tax increase of any percent."
Wu for months has been urging the state to give her administration the power to push a greater share of the city's property tax burden onto commercial owners, arguing that it's the best way to prevent an all-at-once spike from hitting residential owners in 2025.
The first version of her plan cleared the House and stalled in the Senate, and Wu then decreased the proposal's scope in a compromise with business groups. That second iteration also won House approval, but for weeks has idled in the Senate.
Last week, the state Department of Revenue certified property valuations for the city of Boston, which altered projected tax bills.
Wu's office previously forecast that residential bills would increase 14% year over year under a "worst case" scenario without action. Now, her team thinks bills would climb 10.5% annually with no shift and 5.2 percent with the legislation in place and utilized to its maximum.
Opponents quickly jumped on the new figures and argued they are no longer serious enough to warrant action that would shift more burden to commercial property owners.
Collins said Monday the home rule petition had been negotiated "based on false information."
"Whether that was intentional or not, we don't know," he said, soon adding, "Now we know the sky isn't falling, and the campaign of fear and manipulation that took place and continues to take place is a farce."
Wu, however, did not change her position based on the DOR certification. She continued to argue that even a 10.5% increase -- which Collins said would amount to about $40 per month for the average homeowner -- is too much for Bostonians to absorb during a period of high housing costs.
In a Sunday letter to leaders of business groups who supported the compromise legislation before changing course and calling for a pause last week, Wu said city officials repeatedly emphasized during debate that the numbers were "estimates and that they should not be taken as final."
"That caveat was explicit on every example sheet given in writing throughout the last eight months, and it was expressed verbally every single time any of these numbers were discussed," Wu wrote.
Ashley Groffenberger, Boston's chief financial officer and collector-treasurer, pushed back against arguments that the impact without action would be roughly in line with the average 9% annual increase in residential tax bills over the past five years.
"The average annual tax increase for a single family home in Boston was 5% over the last decade, 4.8% over the last 15 years, and 4.1% over the last 18 years," Groffenberger wrote in a letter to city councilors on Monday. "Without legislation, this would be the second-highest annual residential increase since 2010, and the jump in the residential share of total taxes would be the highest single-year increase since 2007. This would be a significant burden of compounding high tax increases for families and especially seniors struggling to afford to stay in Boston."
Labor and senior activist groups who had been advocating for the bill voiced frustration Monday.
"Today's terrible, even though we knew it was going to happen -- we were hoping against hope," said Sherry Peterson, a Mattapan resident and member of the Mass Senior Action Council. "We're on a fixed income, even if they tell us it's not that much. And even when you work, you're on a fixed income. We're very frustrated."
Darlene Lombos, president of the Greater Boston Labor Council, said Collins's opposition to the measure will "absolutely" weigh on the group's consideration of whether to support him moving forward.
"If they won't call us back for this issue, I'm not sure we can count on them for other issues," Lombos said.
"They're disconnected from their own constituents who have a hard time living in Boston, and it seems like their ties to businesses… they're only interested in their bottom line," Lombos added. "So if other senators are only interested in businesses' bottom lines and not about their own residents, then we're going to have to think about who we're endorsing going forward."
It was not immediately clear Monday if city leaders would abandon their push for the tax shift.
The City Council meets Wednesday for what is supposed to be its final session of 2024. Assessing Commissioner Nicholas Ariniello said last week that the council needs to vote by Wednesday on property tax rates "to make sure that we still did everything that needs to happen to get bills printed" on time.
Collins called on the council to "cancel their planned three-week vacation and get this matter right before the end of the year."
"It puts the onus on the City Council to come forward with a new home-rule petition that can target relief for residential homeowners. I think that's something that's viable, that would have support here in an expedited fashion," he told reporters.
Opponents have contended through much of the process that City Hall should instead look to trim its budget -- which grew 8% over the prior year -- or dip into savings to help soften any impact of tax increases.
Brownsberger said he has "always had strong reservations about this proposal to alter the rules in an ad-hoc manner," and he told reporters that Wu was aware of his concerns. He called the latest forecast tax increases "a reasonably phased step in a painful process."
"Boston needs to set its tax rates for fiscal 2025, and I feel that we should end any uncertainty and formally set this bill aside so that the city can move forward and know that they have to set their tax rates without it," he said.
