This campaign for a commission to review the Worcester City Charter, and the content on this page, is not about any individual. The issues described below are not the fault of any current or former city official.
Also, this page does not describe, accuse, or insinuate any ethical failure, wrongdoing, or anything of the sort to any person.
This page describes how part of Worcester’s system of government functions, and why it is problematic.
Controlling Access to Data
Worcester City Councilors are part-time and provided severely limited resources. Of the ten cities with the largest population in Massachusetts, six allocate a larger percentage of their budget to their city council than Worcester. Councilors in New Bedford, which has a population less than half of Worcester, and much smaller city council districts, have the same number of staff dedicated to supporting their city council as Worcester Councilors do.
See our comparison of the city council resources of the top ten cities in Massachusetts.
That lack of resources makes city council almost entirely reliant on the city manager for access to information from any part of city government.
Reports and Reports and Reports, Oh My
Anyone who has watched a Worcester City Council meeting has likely seen councilors request report after report from the administration.
At the most recent city council meeting at the time of writing, May 14, 2024, city councilors requested 11 reports. At its previous meeting, on May 7, there were 20 reports requested.
As Worcester City Councilors are part time and have little support staff, the council has no ability to gather its own data. That leads to so many reports requested by councilors from the administration, they couldn’t possibly fulfill them all. It is common that requested reports never come back at all.
Without information, the council can’t make informed policy decisions.
This reliance by council on the administration enables the city manager to shape council’s agenda. Naturally, the administration is going to prioritize its own agenda when prioritizing the reports it provides. We should want people in government to have ideas and fight for them. We mitigate against the harm too much ambition can have through co-equal branches of government and a legislature with strong oversight powers.
A review of the two most recent meetings available of Boston City Council, on May 8 and May 15, show no request for reports from its councilors
Comparing Worcester and Boston
Boston is much larger than Worcester, with a much larger budget. However, when you compare the two cities as a percentage difference in council resources, a huge disparity emerges.
The Boston City Council also has key powers that the Worcester City Council does not have.
Meaningful Hearings and Subpoena Power
The most important power for any legislature is the legal authority to access evidence.
This authority extends to Boston City Council’s committees.
The authority to subpoena is rarely used. Simply having that power indicates that council has a right to acquire information.
Worcester City Council has no such power. Its committees cannot require any administration official to appear before them and cannot administer an oath that requires truthful testimony under the law. In fact, council is required to ask permission for an administration official to appear at its meetings. Committees do not hold hearings in Worcester.
Without those powers, there is no oversight in Worcester.
Oversight is not Optional
When an executive, like a president, governor, city manager, or mayor, investigates within the organization they are atop of, that is supervision and management. That is not oversight.
Oversight in government comes from outside the management structure. At the federal and state level, the legislative branch is co-equal to the executive branch. In the largest city in Massachusetts, Boston, the legislature has robust powers of oversight.
The purpose of oversight isn’t only to act as a watchdog against waste and corruption. The process of fact-finding informs city council on the laws it creates. Public oversight hearings also inform the public.
In the second largest city in Massachusetts, oversight does not exist.
Budget Power
In Boston, the mayor submits a proposal for an annual budget to the city council. By majority vote, council can change that budget. It cannot increase the total budget, but it can move funds from one department to another.
For example, if the council believes the mayor allocated more funds than reasonable to its Department of Public Works, it can reduce that department’s budget and allocate those funds to education. It could also just reduce the budget of one department and not allocate those funds, which would reduce the overall budget.
The Mayor of Boston has veto power over acts of the council. If the mayor doesn’t like the changes by council, the mayor can issue a veto, City council can override the mayors with a supermajority vote of the council.
In Worcester, the City Manager submits a budget proposal to the city council. The vote of a majority of city councilors can reduce funding in any area, but it cannot allocate those funds to another area. Its only power is to reduce the budget.
Once Worcester City Council allocates funds to a department, it has no control over how it is spent. We saw this happen in Worcester recently.
When the Worcester Police Department sought to buy an unmanned aircraft (aka a drone), it used funds already allocated to the department. Councilors believed those funds were for the department canine program when they allocated those funds.
The majority of city council ultimately voted to approve the purchase of the drone, but that vote was symbolic. It had no power to prevent the purchase.
Think about that: your elected officials have no ability to control how the government spends taxpayer funds.
Worcester City Council Cannot Write Laws on its Own
The Worcester City Council’s three core responsibilities are to hire the city manager, approve the budget, and pass ordinances (local laws). As the legislature of the city, it should be able to legislate on its own.
While councilors do the work to understand the issues and how they can create laws to address those issues, putting those findings into the language of a law requires a lawyer. Using the proper words, understanding the legal jargon, and writing a law that doesn’t contradict other laws takes the specific expertise of an attorney with experience in these matters.
The Worcester City Council does not have its own attorney. Instead, it requests draft ordinances from the administration to debate. The city solicitor, the top lawyer for the city, writes those ordinances.
The city manager appoints the solicitor, who serves at the pleasure of the manager. The manager can fire the city solicitor without cause.
The solicitor, an employee of the executive, should have no hand in any activity of the council, the city’s legislature, in a city the size of Worcester. Council must be independent.