Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan blocked a late-filed order from colleague Erin Murphy seeking funding for police and firefighter cancer screenings during the council's September 30 meeting, marking the third consecutive week Durkan has stopped one of Murphy's late-file measures from reaching the floor. The move triggered a nearly 40-minute debate and renewed accusations that procedural rules are being used as political weapons.
According to the Boston Herald, Durkan said the media has turned her into a “clickbait villain” and that late files have become politicized, adding that she has received threats in her direct messages since the controversy escalated. Murphy had filed the late hearing order seeking a review of city funds for EMS and firefighter screenings, telling colleagues she learned the underlying information from the Boston Police Detectives' Union after Wednesday's filing deadline had already passed.
Per Murphy's filing, Robert Griffin testified that the detectives' union covers members' preventative screening costs, with the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society using roughly $50,000 in fundraising and about $60,000 in union funds for member health screenings, according to differing figures cited in the filing. Murphy argued the matter could have been resolved within two minutes by simply referring it to a council committee, and said an emergency exists “whenever a city employee must pay out of pocket for cancer screening.”
Education Chair Questions the Urgency
Education Committee Chair Julia Mejia sparked much of the extended floor debate by questioning whether Murphy's order actually qualified as an emergency requiring immediate action. Mejia said a separate late-file resolution — allowed through by Durkan — addressing the Roxbury fire appeared more urgent than Murphy's health-screening request.
That resolution, sponsored by Councilors Miniard Culpepper and Henry Santana, called for the city to provide immediate relief to businesses devastated by a six-alarm fire that tore through Roxbury on September 28. The blaze destroyed the historic, 100-year-old Edison Building in Nubian Square and took firefighters more than 12 hours to contain, according to WGBH. Council Rule 46 requires that an emergency be written into a late filing only when it could not have been anticipated before the deadline, a standard Durkan invoked in drawing a distinction between the two matters.
Durkan Defends Her Record, Cites the Numbers
Durkan maintained that her objections are procedural rather than personal, saying only true emergencies — those that are unexpected, unplanned, and constitute a crisis — should be accepted as late files. She said her blocks concern the contents of the late-file matters themselves, not the councilors filing them, and noted that Murphy has filed roughly half of all late-file emergency orders brought before the council over the past year. Durkan argued transparency and accessibility should remain the council's top concerns when it comes to docket review.
Murphy pushed back, accusing Durkan of singling her out and calling the pattern of blocks unprofessional and personal. She said council rules should not be weaponized to obstruct her work, and maintained her health-screening late file met the council's own definition of an emergency under Rule 46.
Massachusetts Open Meeting Law requires that agenda items be publicly noticed 48 hours before a public body meeting, a standard outlined under state law that governs how and when local bodies like the Boston City Council can add items to their agendas. Under council procedure, Rule 46 bars suspension of rules tied to Open Meeting Law compliance, while Rule 33 allows rule suspensions only with unanimous consent — meaning a single councilor's objection, as Durkan's was, is enough to stall same-day adoption of a late file. Murphy's order will now need to be filed again for next week's meeting.
A Pattern Stretching Back Months
Wednesday's clash was not an isolated incident. Durkan has blocked Murphy's late-file orders on a near-weekly basis since around April 2026, according to the Herald's reporting, a stretch that reportedly began when Durkan blocked late-filed orders on Boston Public Schools athletic funding and a requested city financial audit following news of a $48.4 million deficit, as detailed by the Boston Policy Institute. In May, Durkan blocked an earlier Murphy late file also seeking funding for firefighter cancer screenings, which prompted Murphy to accuse her colleague of using procedural tactics to block debate, per Mass Daily News.
Critics have also pointed to Durkan's own use of the late-file process. In July 2025, Durkan sponsored her own late-file emergency resolution urging state action to protect access to GLP-1 weight-loss medications like Ozempic, moving to suspend Rule 33 to secure same-day adoption — a comparison Mass Daily News says critics have raised when questioning whether the rules are applied consistently.
Mejia, for her part, publicly defended Durkan's procedural objections this past September, writing on social media that late-file orders bypass standard review windows and leave councilors without adequate time to digest proposals, according to the same outlet. Council President Liz Breadon, elected in a narrow January vote detailed in Hoodline's earlier coverage, presided over the session.
Back in April, Murphy publicly criticized the council for spending meeting time on non-binding ceremonial resolutions — including recognitions of “Cardi B Day” and Senegalese independence — while blocking late-filed orders concerning city finances and school supplies, according to Universal Hub. The dispute underscores a broader rift on the council, one that has also surfaced in past votes where Durkan and Murphy took opposing sides, including the 2023 fight over the O'Bryant School relocation.
