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Some city councilors are suggesting that Boston’s well-documented traffic-safety issues should be declared a public health crisis or emergency — potentially re-empowering the Boston Public Health Commission, which faced criticism in its unilateral actions during the pandemic.
City Council President Ed Flynn and City Councilor Kendra Lara introduced a non-binding resolution asking the city to declare “road crash injuries a public health crisis requiring urgent action,” a move that the council passed in a voice vote.
“We have to stay on top of these pedestrian-safety issues. And that’s our job is city councilors, is making sure that we provide the safest neighborhood for our children, for our families, especially our seniors and persons with disabilities,” said Flynn, who’s been an outspoken advocate for safer streets for years.
Lara, who didn’t respond to a further request for comment later in the week, added in the Wednesday council meeting that “This is a public-health emergency that requires planning and financial investments to correct.”
As a resolution, like many of the items the council passes, this approval doesn’t have any concrete effect. But if the city does declare either a public-health emergency or crisis — the councilors used each of those words at various times, though they have somewhat different meanings to the health commission — the city of Boston again would be empowering a body that became the target of criticism earlier this year for its unilateral action under an emergency declaration.
City Councilor Erin Murphy, the body’s public-health chair and, earlier this year, a critic of the BPHC’s continued usage of the public-health emergency declaration to keep making decisions without any open meetings, said there are some questions.
“Traffic safety for pedestrians and those who are trying to get around the city is of utmost importance — (as) chair of public health I’d want to learn more about what the public health commission would add,” she said.
When Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration and the Boston Public Health Commission were asked about whether such a declaration about traffic safety is on the table and what it would mean, the administration said it’s looking into it.
“The relevant City and Boston Public Health Commission teams are reviewing the council’s resolution,” Wu’s office said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting our residents and ensuring safety on Boston’s streets.”
When asked what this would mean in practice, Flynn said he’d need to engage the BPHC in a more formal way to work on actual logistics.
Two years ago, in March 2020, that BPHC declared the COVID-19 pandemic a public-health emergency, a move that vested in its executive director wide latitude to take unilateral actions around masking rules, business restrictions and, eventually, vaccine requirements.
That declaration remained in place through this winter, eventually leading to criticism that the commission was making a questionable application of state law and failing to be transparent or responsive around major pandemic-related decisions.
The commission eventually rescinded the order this March.
Somewhat different — though the city didn’t provide quite how — is a “crisis” declaration, which then-Mayor Marty Walsh made in June 2020 about racism, signing and executive order that proclaims that “racism constitutes an emergency and public health crisis in the City of Boston.”
The executive order, which followed a similar request from City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, similarly called upon the BPHC — as well as the department of Health and Human Resources, which doesn’t exist in the same form after Wu shuffled the roles of top health officials — to work with all other city departments on improving policies around race.
The order, whose eight main objectives are generally broad statements such as “Engage historically marginalized communities in identifying problems and solutions and supporting community-driven responses,” remains in effect.
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