One day after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu renewed her legislative push to ease the pain of property tax hikes on Boston homeowners, the debate has already gotten heated.
Wu on Thursday took aim at state Senator Nick Collins, a fellow Boston Democrat who repeatedly blocked Wu’s bill from advancing in the chamber last year. Collins, in turn, shot back hours later, laying bare their increasingly public — and personal — feud.
Collins had doubled down on his opposition to Wu’s legislative proposal, charging this week that she was “raising property taxes on everyone during a time of financial strain” and withholding data on her projections that taxes on average single-family homes in the city are poised to jump 13 percent.
Wu on Thursday accused Collins of being “either badly misinformed or purposely misleading voters” about his opposition to her bill, saying “it is not up for debate” that residential property owners weathered a double-digit property tax increase last year — and stand to do so again.
On Friday, the city released a memo with state-certified property valuation data, which a city spokesperson said confirmed “with certainty” that the average single-family homeowners will face a 13 percent year-over-year increase.
Wu on Thursday also argued that Collins did not attend or ask questions at either of the hearings on her bill at the State House last year.
“There was [also] a meeting in the Senate president’s office that I and our Boston delegation and the business group representatives were all at, and Senator Collins did not say a word in that meeting," Wu told reporters at an unrelated event Thursday. “So it’s concerning to me that he claims not to understand the basic facts of what his constituents are going through these days.
“Our residents know it,” she continued. “They feel it, and it’s been going on for far too long. We need relief now.”
Wu also released a video on the social media platform Bluesky, calling on residents to urge their state senators to pass the legislation.
Hours later, Collins released a similarly heated response, saying Wu was engaging in “political theatrics around her failed plan and strategy.”
“Either the Mayor is engaging in revisionist history to intentionally mislead taxpayers, or her memory is particularly foggy about the meeting that took place in the Senate last session,” the South Boston lawmaker said in a statement to the Globe on Thursday, claiming Wu stopped a city official at the gathering from sharing the valuation data the city had submitted to the state.
“Policy makers and the public deserve to know the truth about the City of Boston’s finances rather than hyperbole and fear-mongering,” he continued. “The fact that we have not heard from the Mayor in a year on this issue, yet she now claims sudden urgency, simply does not add up.”
The criticisms on both sides are the latest shots fired in a nearly two-year-long battle between the mayor and lawmakers on Beacon Hill. She has repeatedly sought state approval to temporarily shift more of the city’s tax burden onto commercial real estate to cushion the pain of sharp tax increases for residential property owners.
Wu and other city officials announced this week that without legislative action, the average single family home’s January tax bill would go up 26 percent compared with last quarter, and year over year, it would jump by 13 percent. Simultaneously, the average high-end office building would see a 4.4 percent year-over-year decrease in the taxes its owners pay, Wu said.
It will be the second consecutive year of double-digit tax hikes for residential property owners, who experienced a 10.4 percent increase last fiscal year.
More than 70 percent of Boston’s $4.8 billion budget is funded by property taxes. State law also significantly restricts how much more cities and towns can collect in property taxes each year, and how that burden can be split between commercial and residential real estate.
Boston already taxes commercial properties at 175 percent of the residential property tax rate — the highest allowed by state law — to minimize the tax burden on homeowners.
Since the rise of remote work amid the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial property values in Boston have significantly dropped, while residential property values have risen. With less revenue to collect from commercial buildings, the city has had to collect more from homeowners to make up the difference.
The alternative, officials say, would include dramatically slashing the city’s budget and public services. Wu this week asked her department heads to propose how they would cut 2 percent from their budgets ahead of the next budget cycle.
Wu has sought the Legislature’s approval since last year to further raise commercial property tax rates for a few years, to ease the transition to higher taxes for residential property owners.
She struck a compromise deal with prominent business groups that had initially opposed her plan, and Wu twice got her measure through the Massachusetts House. Both times, however, it died in the Senate. Wu filed the legislation for a third time earlier this year, but it has languished on Beacon Hill.
Wu this week urged state lawmakers to take action on her proposal, and called on business groups to “publicly reaffirm” their support for it.
While the head of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau called Wu’s consideration of budget cuts an “important step,” other business or real estate-affiliated groups appeared less supportive of Wu’s push.
“Instead of increasing the costs and the difficulty of developing and operating a business in Boston, we urge policy makers to refocus on strategies that support economic growth and competitiveness, strengthening our commercial sector, and creating jobs for our residents,” James E. Rooney, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement Thursday.
Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.