Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s authorized invoice for her high-stakes congressional listening to on sanctuary cities final March has elevated by $100,000, to carry town’s complete anticipated spending on the matter to a whopping $750,000.
The town had disclosed forward of the mayor’s testimony that it anticipated to pay as much as $650,000 in taxpayer funds to organize for the Washington, D.C. listening to, however by no means informed the general public that prices finally elevated by $100,000.
The extra spending is detailed in an modification to a contract town beforehand entered into with the legislation agency of Cahill Gordon & Reindel that was obtained by the Herald. The contract’s finish date is listed as this previous June 30.
The rationale prices spiked to $750,000, the contract modification states, is as a result of the preliminary contract “did not anticipate the complexity and protracted nature of these matters and was insufficient to meet the cost of the services that are being rendered.”
Beneath the phrases of the contract, town was billed $950 per hour by the legislation agency for “representation of the city, mayor” and “all other city employees in an investigation by the United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, to include document production, hearings and depositions.”
Wu’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the elevated spending on Tuesday.
The inflated invoice was criticized by an area fiscal watchdog group.
“Mayor Wu should reimburse the taxpayers for this type of reckless spending,” Paul Craney, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, mentioned in an announcement to the Herald. “The city of Boston shouldn’t be on the hook for the mayor’s legal team. The mayor created this mess, but it’s the taxpayers who are bailing her out.”
Following prior criticism, Wu defended the preliminary $650,000 invoice as being needed amid threats to place her in jail and lower town’s federal funding, which have been made by some Republican lawmakers on the congressional oversight committee.
After the listening to, in March, Home Republican Anna Paulina Luna mentioned she formally referred Wu to the Division of Justice for felony prosecution.
Extra lately, the Division of Justice sued the Metropolis of Boston, Wu and the Police Division in federal court docket earlier this month for town’s sanctuary insurance policies, which, per an announcement from Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi upon the go well with’s submitting, “undermine law enforcement and protect illegal aliens from justice.”
Wu defended town’s sanctuary insurance policies and public security report on the congressional listening to, and once more at a Metropolis Corridor press convention when she defied a federal order to dismantle these insurance policies, or extra particularly, the Boston Belief Act, which limits native cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The federal lawsuit was filed lower than two weeks after Wu’s press convention.
Along with dropping $750,000 on outdoors authorized bills, town spent $9,909 in taxpayer funds for journey lodging for the mayor’s journey to D.C., which mirrored prices for Wu and the 11 workers members she introduced alongside for the listening to.
