The Boston City Council voted Wednesday to subpoena MBTA general manager Phil Eng to testify in a council hearing about the proposed $164 million redesign of Blue Hill Avenue, exercising a rarely used power in a bid to press Eng publicly about the controversial plan.
City Councilor Miniard Culpepper filed the subpoena order after he charged that Eng and other transportation officials skirted opponents’ questions at four September public hearings about the project, which is being led by the T and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration. The Dorchester Democrat said Eng then did not show up to an Oct. 14 field hearing he organized.
Culpepper and fellow Councilor Brian Worrell have pushed T officials to consider replacing the project with a plan to extend the Orange Line. Eng has said repeatedly that the Blue Hill Avenue redesign does not preclude future discussions about rail expansion, which would likely take several years and millions of dollars to study before shovels ever hit the ground.
Eng also previously met with Culpepper and Worrell in June.
Culpepper said Wednesday that members of Wu’s Streets Cabinet informed him in advance that they would not attend the Oct. 14 gathering. The City Council did not seek to subpoena Wu or her staff Wednesday.
“The residents of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan deserve meaningful consideration of long-term rapid transit alternatives, including a feasibility study of an Orange Line extension,” Culpepper said ahead of the council’s vote. “They deserve answers from state officials responsible for these decisions.”
Eight of the 13 councilors voted in favor of the subpoena order. Councilors Gabriela Coletta Zapata and Sharon Durkan voted against the order, and Councilors John FitzGerald, Enrique Pepén, and Benjamin Weber each voted present.
Joe Pesaturo, a MBTA spokesperson, said Wednesday that the agency was reviewing the council’s “request.” He also said that the T “previously informed” city council officials that Eng was unavailable to go to the Oct. 14 meeting.
The MBTA “is committed to continuing to engage with the city and the community on this important project,” Pesaturo said.
In a statement late Wednesday night, a spokesperson for Wu said administration officials do “not believe that subpoenas are a constructive way to engage with close partners in government.”
“We encourage the Council to find more productive ways to engage,” the statement read.
City and T officials are moving forward on the major construction project through the heart of Black Boston. They have said for years that a retrofitted Blue Hill Avenue — complete with a center-running bus lane — would speed up transit travel for 40,000 riders and bring much-needed safety and beautification improvements to the commercial artery.
The project is funded by a bundle of $40 million in state funds, $18 million in city funding, $11 million from the T, and $95 million in federal grants officials say are tied directly to the creation of a center-running bus lane.
But Culpepper and Worrell are leading a small but vocal contingent of opponents against the bus lane design and the wider project. Many have complained about losing parking under the plan, the prospect of residents being further displaced, and potential safety issues from putting a bus lane down the middle of the road.
Culpepper has said repeatedly that he is fighting instead to restore Orange Line service to Blue Hill Avenue about 70 years after a trolley on the corridor was ripped out to make way for suburban commuters.
“We lost that right to have rail transportation,” Culpepper said. “That was really the heart of the community. That was the way we got downtown. ... I consider that a serious civil rights issue.”
On Wednesday, he also pointed to city officials’ decision in early October to nix its plans to extend a center-running bus lane on Columbus Avenue and create a lane along the curb instead.
Chris Osgood, the city’s interim streets chief, told the Globe then that the stretch of Columbus Avenue north of Jackson Square can accommodate a side-running bus lane because it has fewer businesses and loading zones than Blue Hill Avenue.
The Boston City Council can, but rarely does, subpoena public officials. Both the city charter and Massachusetts state law give the body the authority to summon witnesses to speak at council hearings and face the same penalties for noncompliance, such as fines or imprisonment, as witnesses subpoenaed to appear in civil court.
But the council rarely flexes that power, which in the past has been considered a “nuclear” option to force reluctant residents, officials, or other community leaders to testify before the body.
It most recently utilized that authority in 2024, in an attempt to force Joshua Balcunas, Boston’s USPS postmaster, to testify in a council hearing about reports of inconsistent and unreliable mail service. Balcunas declined to testify at a previous hearing on the subject and ultimately defied the subpoena order.
Attorneys for the city would have had to go to court to enforce the subpoena, and a USPS lawyer argued that federal courts have set the precedent that state authorities, including state courts, don’t have the power to force federal agencies or their employees to testify.
The council in 2014 issued two subpoenas for then-Boston University president Robert A. Brown about the university’s record on diversity and a controversial city landlord over the conditions in his properties. Prior to 2014, the council had not issued a subpoena since 1982, according to previous Globe reporting.
Some councilors on Wednesday said they could not support the subpoena because Eng had answered questions about the Blue Hill Avenue project at several public meetings.
Durkan, a city councilor who represents Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and other central Boston neighborhoods, said that the body should be “choosy” about how it uses its subpoena power after her calls for Balcunas, the USPS official, to testify went nowhere.
“I don’t want to make a mockery of the summons process,” Durkan said Wednesday.
She implied that Boston should not jeopardize federal funding it’s been awarded for the project. The Trump administration and the city are already in a legal battle about a $20 million grant for street safety upgrades in Roxbury that federal officials revoked.
“I do think that if we’re asking whether the city should accept money from the federal government to make improvements in our communities, the answer should almost always be ‘yes,’” Durkan said.
Councilor Julia Mejia voted for the measure because she said the subpoena is the only way for the council to flex its power when “no one’s taking us serious.”
“If we’re going to utilize our political power and our political capital, and we’re trying to advocate for our constituents, then the people who are making decisions that impact us need to come before this body so that we can make informed decisions,” Mejia said.
In recent weeks, Culpepper has also twice traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of a US Senate committee and officials at the Federal Transit Administration about Blue Hill Avenue and a potential Orange Line extension.
City and T officials have said final design work and additional public meetings on the project are slated for next year, with construction anticipated to begin in 2028.
Eng has said repeatedly that the project, and the center-running bus lane, does not preclude future discussions about an expansion of the Orange Line, which would likely take several years and millions of dollars to study before shovels ever hit the ground.
Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_. Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.