One year after inking a reformed police contract, Boston is still working to make a path for civilian flaggers to pick up traffic detail shifts as the new terms permit.
According to city officials familiar with the work, the Boston Police Department was previously arranging traffic detail assignments through an old-fashioned system: a pen, paper and a couple dozen people who knew the ins and outs. In many years, this meant a high portion of requests for details went unfulfilled, despite a city requirement that construction projects with impacts to the road hire traffic details. That system and the priority of assignments within it was part of what was renegotiated in the police contract finalized last year.
Now, the city is accepting bids to develop a modern system, likely an app or website, to manage and distribute the newly tiered traffic detail shifts.
Mayor Michelle Wu told GBH News the new technology is a key step toward creating a management system for shifts that can integrate trained civilian personnel and other non-BPD officers, freeing up more police officers for higher priority details at major arteries, in busy intersections and in areas with heavy traffic.
“This would centralize how details are requested and distributed through one platform that is actually in this era,” said Wu. “It’s not only then more efficient when it comes to how details are filled and tracked and assigned, but it also means that we have the officers, who previously were just working on these assignments in all different locations, able to be on the shifts that most directly impact community.”
Officials said the city’s request for bids will close later this month. After that, the city will need to conduct a second search to find a third-party administrator that will train and manage the eventual pool of qualified civilians ready to pick up traffic detail shifts. Responses for the second search will likely be due in March.
Charles Chieppo, a longtime fellow of the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, is doubtful Boston will see results given years of advocacy on the issue with little to show.
“We’ll probably get the change made around the time that [Boston Public Schools] buses get to school on time,” he said in a recent interview with GBH News.
“A year later, they’ve got a pen and paper system, it’s just an excuse that’s completely unacceptable,” he added. “It’s completely unacceptable to the Boston taxpayers and it’s completely unacceptable to the people who could be working in these positions.”
The city could also be leaving money on the table. State law allows Boston to charge a 10% fee to offset the costs of administering details. Last year, the city collected $2.7 million in BPD administrative fees — a figure that does not include any details worked by non-BPD personnel.
A spokesperson for City Councilor Enrique Pepén, chair of the council’s City Services and Innovation Technology committee, said he intends to file a hearing order on the matter in the next legislative session.
“Councilor Pepén views this matter as a high priority,” the spokesperson said. “He is committed to ensuring that all members of our community are safe and that traffic details are handled in a way that best serves the city’s needs.”
Asked about the seemingly slow-moving pace of progress on the issue, Wu said the issue is one that’s been worked on for years and the administration is moving as fast as it can.
“We just have to get this right by putting all the pieces in order, because there’s significant stakes attached to these assignments and safety of those who are performing the details and then also those who are moving through the area,” Wu said. “I’m very grateful for all the work that’s happening to get the infrastructure set so that we can administer this really smoothly.”
The opening of traffic detail assignments to civilians has been years in the making. Massachusetts became the last state in the country to permit the arrangement in 2008. In Boston, up until the 2023 contract’s finalization, police held a monopoly on traffic details, collecting millions of dollars annually while simultaneously letting as much as 40% of detail requests go unfilled. Advocates who pushed for the deconstruction of that system argued that those shifts could be filled instead by residents looking to earn money.
A 2015 report found that the old system also cost Boston millions of dollars when officers failed to file the necessary paper work to invoice vendors. Auditors with the Public Safety Strategies Group wrote that year the city was still waiting to collect $24 million, $8 million of which was deemed “uncollectible,” despite officers having been paid through the city’s fronted money.
Financial impacts, Chieppo said, should be an area of greater focus.
“We did this reform in 2008,” he said, “but the result of the reform is that we don’t save any money on civilian flaggers over having police do it.”
Chieppo pointed to a 2018 Pioneer Institute report which illustrated a link between the slow pace of civilian flagger reform to the state law that keeps wages for the work high, yielding little budget savings for Massachusetts entities that go to the trouble of sparring with police unions over the change.
At the time, flaggers in Massachusetts earned $43.44 an hour, significantly more on federally funded projects than flaggers in nearly 40 other states.
“Massachusetts is one of only five states in which the prevailing wage is based exclusively on the highest wage rate in from union collective bargaining agreements in that particular area, as opposed to having it be based partially on union collective bargaining agreements and partially on actual wages,” said Chieppo.
“What needs to happen is simply that the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development needs to look at civilian flaggers and set a reasonable wage for what civilian flaggers should make.”
A spokesperson from the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development said right now, the Prevailing Wage rate for flaggers in Suffolk, Middlesex and Norfolk Counties is $55.06 per hour — a figure that could change by the time Boston actually brings its civilian flaggers online.
City officials say Boston could see civilian flaggers in 2025.
