Councilor At-Large Erin Murphy alleged on Instagram Wednesday that District 8 Councilor Sharon Durkan had repeatedly obstructed council work, on account of her blocking two resolutions at the council meeting earlier that day. 

One, a declaration by District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn that Mass and Cass be considered a public safety, public health, and humanitarian crisis, and Murphy’s own resolution affirming council support for Massachusetts House Bill H.3731: An Act to enhance pedestrian safety.

“This is not the first time she has taken this approach,” reads Murphy’s post. “Week after week, she uses her ability to object as a tool to shut down conversation, particularly on issues that may be politically inconvenient for the administration,” and that “[Durkan’s] objections prevented both resolutions from moving forward, shutting down any opportunity for discussion.” 

On Mass and Cass, Durkan claimed that declaring a humanitarian crisis would only serve to waive public process and that the City Council lacked the authority to declare such an emergency in the first place.

“Declaring a public health emergency allows boards of health to issue emergency orders to prevent imminent harm to the general public without engaging in the usual public process,” she said. “These declarations trigger specific emergency powers that are outside of the City Council’s scope of legislative priority. We had the same conversation exactly two years ago when I joined the Council… and for those same reasons, I will be blocking a vote today on this subject matter.”

Flynn called the objection unfair because Durkan had outlined her argument on the issue before announcing that she would be blocking the vote. “When she objected, that should have been the end of the conversation, then it would go into the Committee…. Her main goal was to object to it, but she also had the opportunity to speak directly on it,” he told Council President Ruthzee Louijeune.

“If she had objected from the beginning, that would have ended the debate. She did not. It came at the end. There’s no discussion on the matter. Those are the rules,” Louijeune responded.

H.3731 proposes statewide reforms to enhance pedestrian safety through improved infrastructure, raising awareness, and increasing pedestrian protections – including increasing the cap on damages incurred while traveling on a municipal way from $5,000 to $100,000, increasing the time limit to notify the municipality of injury on a municipal way from 30 days to two years, and removing stipulation that the Commonwealth is not liable for injuries sustained on a sidewalk owned by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Durkan requested information on how many claims had been submitted for falls on Boston’s streets. “I just believe that there’s financial implications for that that I can not, without that information, vote on this today,” she said. 

Durkan declined to respond to Murphy’s comments.

Flynn and Murphy’s resolutions have been referred to the Committees on Public Health, Homelessness, and Recovery and on Planning, Development, and Transportation, respectively.