Kim Janey

Kim Janey
File:Kim Janey FBm5KzGX0AI6PqT (1).jpg
Mayor of Boston Acting
In office March 22, 2021 – November 16, 2021
Preceded by	Marty Walsh
Succeeded by	Michelle Wu
President of the Boston City Council
Incumbent
Assumed office January 2020
Preceded by	Andrea Campbell
Member of the Boston City Council from the 7th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 2018
Preceded by	Tito Jackson
Personal details
Born	(1965-05-16) May 16, 1965 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Children	1
Education	Smith College
Website	Official website

Kim Michelle Janey (born May 16, 1965) is an American politician who has served as President of the Boston City Council since 2020, and as a member of the council from the 7th district since 2018. She also served as Acting Mayor of Boston for eight months in 2021. She is the first woman and first black person to serve as acting mayor of the city during a vacancy in the office of mayor.

Janey began her career as a community organizer and education advocate, working for groups such as Parents United for Child Care. and Massachusetts Advocates for Children. A member of the Democratic Party, Janey entered politics when she successfully ran for the Boston City Council in 2017. She has been a member of the Boston City Council since January 2018, and was selected as president of the Council in January 2020. On the city council, she represents the 7th district (which includes Roxbury, with parts of the South End, Dorchester, and Fenway). Janey became Boston's acting mayor upon Marty Walsh's departure from the post when he was confirmed as the United States secretary of labor. Janey was a candidate in the nonpartisan primary of the 2021 Boston mayoral election, but had an unsuccessful fourth-place finish. Janey later endorsed Michelle Wu for the general election. Wu went on to win the general election, and was Janey's successor.

Early life and education

Kim M. Janey was born on May 16, 1965, in Roxbury, Boston, to Clifford B. Janey and Phyllis Janey, who divorced when she was young. Her father taught and worked as a school administrator in Boston, and would serve as superintendent of the Rochester City School District, District of Columbia Public Schools, and Newark Public Schools. The birthplaces of her ancestors include North Carolina on her mother's side, and Guyana, Virginia, Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts on her father's. One grandfather was born in Chelsea in 1915 and a great-grandfather in Medford in 1890. She "has had family in the city of Boston for six generations".

When she was 11, Kim Janey attended school in Charlestown, Boston. She, along with other students, was bused from Roxbury to Charlestown, as part of Boston's controversial court-mandated school desegregation plan. She later attended high school in Reading, Massachusetts, under a voluntary program that allowed inner city students to commute to nearby suburbs for high school. She gave birth to a daughter at the age of 16. After graduating from high school, she worked to raise her daughter and attended community college. She entered Smith College but interrupted her studies to care for her ill grandfather after the death of her grandmother. She eventually graduated from Smith College in 1994.

Janey volunteered for Mel King's campaign in the 1983 Boston mayoral election.

In 1994, Janey participated in the Ada Comstock Scholars Program designed for students who are older than the traditional age for college students.

Career as a community organizer

Janey worked as a community organizer and education advocate for Parents United for Child Care. She joined the Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a nonprofit, in 2001. At Massachusetts Advocates for Children, she worked for roughly seventeen years as an activist and project director, mainly focusing on eliminating g the opportunity and achievement gaps in education for children of color, children learning English as a second language, children with special needs, and children living in poverty.

In 2015, Janey served on the transition team aiding Tommy Chang in his transition into the position of superintendent of Boston Public Schools.

Boston City Council

Janey was first elected to the council in November 2017, as the representative of District 7, which includes Roxbury, and parts of Dorchester, the Fenway and the South End. In the September Democratic primary she led the field of thirteen candidates with 25% of the votes, and then she faced the other leading candidate, Rufus Faulk, in the general election. She won the election with 55.5 percent of the 8,901 votes cast. When she was sworn in in January 2018, she became the first woman to represent District 7 on the council.

Janey was re-elected in November 2019 with over 70% of the votes cast in her district. In her reelection campaign, it attracted attention that she shared a campaign office with both the reelection campaign of at-large councilor Michelle Wu and the election campaign of at-large council candidate Alejandra St. Guillen.

In January 2020, Janey was elected as president of the City Council by her fellow councilors.

As a member of the council, she has focused on education and social justice. She has supported changing the method of choosing Boston School Committee members, replacing the current system of mayoral appointment with an elected school committee.

In July 2018, Janey, along with fellow city councilors Lydia Edwards and Michelle Wu, introduced legislation that would have removed as-of-right designations for chain stores, thereby requiring a conditional use permit for an chain stores to open and operate in any area designated as a "neighborhood business district". In promotion of the proposed legislation, Janey said, "While chain stores also play a role in our economy, it is imperative that community members have the opportunity to weigh in on whether to allow them based on the unique circumstances of their neighborhood business district."

Janey partnered with fellow councilor Michelle Wu to probe the city's process for awarding municipal contracts, finding that only 1% municipal contracts were going to women and minority-owned vendors. These findings were the impetus for the city to start looking at ways to diversify the recipients of city contracts.

In November 2019, the City Council passed an ordinance authored by Janey, aiming to increase equity in the legal cannabis industry. The ordinance included the creation of a new oversight board to assess and vote on applications for licenses based on a set criteria. Mayor Walsh signed the ordinance into law later that month. John Jordan of the publication Globest wrote that the ordinance made the city the, "first US city to prioritize cannabis industry diversity". The ordinance changed the way marijuana dispensaries were awarded licenses by the city, establishing an independent board to review applications. Previously, licenses were awarded by the mayor's office.

In 2021, Janey, with fellow councilor Andrea Campbell, proposed an ordinance that would have banned employers in Boston from running credit checks on job seekers, arguing that credit checks are most detrimental to low-income applicants.

Acting mayor of Boston

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Janey speaks with Congressman Stephen Lynch, Governor Charlie Baker, and others in March 2021

On January 7, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden selected Boston mayor Marty Walsh as his nominee for Secretary of Labor. On March 22, 2021, Walsh was confirmed by the United States Senate; he resigned as mayor later that day. Janey, as president of the City Council, became the acting mayor of Boston, as prescribed by the Boston City Charter. Janey is the first woman and the first person of color to serve as acting mayor of Boston during a vacancy in the office. Janey held an unofficial swearing in ceremony on March 24. The historic nature of Janey being the first woman and first black woman to hold any mayoral-style role in Boston's history caused Janey's ascent to the role of acting mayor to receive national media attention.

Janey refers to herself as being "mayor", rather than "acting mayor". She identifies herself as Boston's 55th mayor. However, the Boston City Charter distinguishes between permanent and acting mayors.

Janey, as City Council President, remains acting mayor until the 2021 Boston mayoral election is decided in November 2021. Janey announced on April 6, 2021, her candidacy in the mayoral election. Per the Boston City Charter, acting mayors, “possess the powers of mayor only in matters not admitting of delay” and “have no power to make permanent appointments." In June 2021, amid tensions between Janey and the city council over budget discussions, the city council granted itself the authority to remove its president by a two-thirds majority vote. Should that action occur, the council would elect a new president who would be designated acting mayor. While Janey fills the some of the duties of mayor on an acting basis, the duties of city council president are being filled on an acting basis by the council's president pro tempore, Matt O'Malley.

After her term as acting mayor ends, Janey will be able to remain on the City Council until her current term as a councilor expires in January 2022.

Transition into role

In late February, anticipating Walsh's confirmation and her ascent to the acting mayoralty, Janey announced key individuals who would serve as members of her senior leadership team once she assumed the role of acting mayor. In early March, Janey established six "Mayoral Transition Sub-Committees" to help guide her transition into the role of acting mayor. Heading one of these committees was Frederica Williams.

COVID-19 pandemic in Boston

Janey took office amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Boston.

Ahead of assuming the position of acting mayor, Janey selected Omar Boukili to serve as her senior advisor on COVID-19 response and strategic initiatives.

In March, Janey announced the Vaccine Equity Grant Initiative, which she worked to launch with the city's Office of Health and Human Services and Boston Public Health Commission. The program was aimed to increase awareness of and access to the COVID-19 vaccine in communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of this program was her first announcement after becoming acting mayor.

In April, Janey and Boston's health and human services chief Marty Martinez announced the Boston Public Health Commission's "Hope" campaign, a multilingual public awareness campaign aiming to encourage Boston's residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

In early August, Janey controversially compared requiring proof of vaccination (vaccine passports) to slave papers and birtherism. She walked back this comparison days later.

On August 12, Janey announced a mandate that all municipal employees either needed to be vaccinated for COVID-19 or undergo regular COVID-19 tests. In October, Janey threatened that she might fire municipal employees who did not abide by this mandate.

In late August, after the United States Supreme Court overturned the federal eviction moratorium, Janey announced a municipal moratorium, which would remain in effect indefinitely until the executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission rescinds it. It bans landlords and homeowners from serving or enforcing evictions on city residents, except in cases which involve, "serious violations of the terms of the tenancy that impair the health and safety of other building residents or immediately adjacent neighbors." At the same time, Janey announced that she would direct the Department of Neighborhood Development to use $5 million of federal pandemic relief funds to create a "Foreclosure Prevention Fund" to help homeowners behind on payment to cover their expenses.

Despite calls by her mayoral election opponents Andrea Campbell and Michelle Wu to do so in August, amid rising delta variant infections, Janey refused to implement a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for entrance to indoor establishments, such as restaurants and gyms.

Homelessness

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Janey (far right) at an October 13, 2021 press conference with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Senator Ed Markey

In late March, Janey's administration temporarily shut down the city's "comfort station" in the Mass and Cass area (also known as the "Methadone Mile"), which is the location of a large homeless population. The comfort station provided services such as bathrooms to the homeless. It reopened with changes in May, but was permanently shut in July, with Janey's office citing safety concerns.

In May, Janey stated that the city was "reviewing" the possible use of ferries to bring people to Long Island, where facilities could be used to provide services to the homeless (such facilities had been closed on the island since the 2014 closure of the bridge to it). By the end of September, Janey ruled this out as a viable option.

In September, Janey announced plans to house homeless people from the Mass and Cass area at a hotel in Revere, Massachusetts. However, Revere mayor Brian M. Arrigo spoke in strong opposition to that idea. However, Janey had stood by the plan.

On October 19, Janey declared homelessness and addiction a public health crisis. Janey also announced that she planned to remove tents from the Mass and Cass area, and relocate people into homeless shelters and treatment centers. Janey signed an executive order creating a "central coordinating team" of local and state officials to outline shelter and addiction treatments available in the region for those needing them. Her executive order also included the step of removing tents from Mass and Cass. The city soon after required homeless people to quickly vacate the area. Some advocates have protested Janey's plan to clear the area's tent city. Janey has justified it by citing the lack of hygienic facilities in tents, the sexual assaults and crime in the area, and the four or five overdoses that are reversed each day in the area. Opponents have argued that the dismantling of the tents and other makeshift structures, forcibly if necessary, effectively amounts to a criminalization of homelessness and addiction.

Policing

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Janey at the 2021 Roxbury Unity Parade

In April, Janey named Stephanie Everett to be head of the city's new Office of Police Accountability and Transparency.

In May, Janey signed into law an ordinance which restricted the Boston Police Department's use of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Such a measure had been vetoed earlier in 2021 by Mayor Walsh. Around the same time, Janey announced that she had directed the city to drop its legal defense of a Boston Police Department promotion exam that had been criticized by opponents as "racially discriminatory". Janey ordered the city to move to reach a settlement in the years-long litigation surrounding the exam. This move followed both pressure from mayoral election opponents and a story in The Boston Globe on the lawsuit.

Also in May, a report from an independent probe was released, finding Police Commissioner Dennis White to have had a pattern of alleged domestic violence. After this, Janey made an attempt to oust White, who had already been suspended by Mayor Walsh months earlier. White took legal action, challenging Janey's authority as acting mayor to fire him. In June 2021, Janey formally terminated White's employment.

In June, the Boston City Council approved Janey's 2022 budget, which included a plan to cut $399 million from the police budget, including a reduction of their overtime budget from $65 million to $45 million. Janey's office claimed that their long-term plan would be to add 30 more officers to the police force, claiming that doing so would help to cut down on overtime expenses. While her budget passed, aspects of it related to policing did receive vocal criticism from some members of the city council.

In early August, Janey announced a pilot program that would see EMTs and mental health personnel respond without the assistance of police to 9-1-1 calls on mental health matters that are not a public safety concern. The plan was established by the city's Mental Health Crisis Response Working Group, as well as the Boston Police Department and the Boston Office of Health and Human Services at Janey's urging.

Transit

Soon after becoming acting mayor, Janey advocated that she wanted the MBTA to return to its pre-pandemic service levels.

In March, Janey announced a pilot program that would offer 1,000 workers in five of the city's business districts (East Boston, and Fields Corner, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Nubian Square, Three Squares) free MBTA and Bluebikes passes with up to $60 in credit.

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During Janey's acting mayoralty, the city funded a pilot program which made the MBTA Route 28 bus (pictured) fare-free for a three-month period

In June, Janey announced that the city would be funding a $500,000 three-month pilot that would see the MBTA's Route 28 bus be made fare-free. In 2019, as a city councilor, she and fellow councilor Michelle Wu had previously called for this bus route to be made fare-free.

Other matters

In May, Janey signed an ordinance into law which would move the nonpartisan primary for the 2021 Boston mayoral election, in which she was a declared candidate, from its originally-scheduled date of September 21, to the date of September 14.

In June, Janey announced that the total amount an individual first-time homebuyer could receive in assistance from the city would expand significantly to $40,000. She also signed an executive order awarding city contractors state prevailing wages.

In June, two female Latina American Boston School Committee members resigned over a scandal involving racially-charged text messages that they had sent about White West Roxbury residents. Stating that their resignations left a "void in Latina leadership" on the Boston School Committee, Janey pledged that she would appoint Latina replacements, a promise she fulfilled the following month.

In late August, Janey announced that she would be moving to withdraw the Downtown Waterfront District Municipal Harbor Plan zoning plan, which had been years in the works. She cited concerns regarding equity and climate resiliency. However, weeks later, Governor Charlie Baker claimed that state officials would reject Janey's withdrawal, unless the city submits a replacement plan.

In September, Janey signed into law an ordinance creating a city commission on Black men and boys. The Boston City Council had previously approved the creation of such a commission in 2014, but it had been vetoed by Mayor Walsh.

On September 24, Janey met with mayoral general election candidates Annissa Essaibi George and Michelle Wu at the Francis Parkman House, and the three agreed to November 16 as the tentative date for the expected transition of power for the mayoralty.

On October 5, Janey signed into law an ordinance requiring buildings in the city that are larger than 20,000 square feet to reach net-zero carbon emissions by the year 2050, and setting emissions reporting requirements for such buildings.

On October 6, Janey signed an executive order replacing the city's recognition of the second Monday in October as "Columbus Day" with a recognition of the day as "Indigenous Peoples' Day".

On October 22, 2021, Janey sent a letter to the United States Census Bureau to announce the city's intention to challenge the 2020 United States census results for the city, alleging that the city's population had been undercounted.

Mayoral campaign

See also: 2021 Boston mayoral election

File:Kim Janey mayoral campaign logo 2021 (orange background).png

Mayoral campaign logo

Acting Mayor Janey announced on April 6, 2021, that she would run in the 2021 Boston mayoral election. This was Janey's first citywide race, and only her third-ever campaign for public office.

Early into her campaign, she was seen as a likely candidate to make the general election. Her acting incumbency, and the national media attention it initially received, was perceived as being a strong advantage. During much of the summer, she was seen as gaining ground in the election, and was out-fundraising her opponents. However, Ellen Barry of The New York Times and Lisa Kashinsky of Politico have suggested that her comments in early August on vaccine passports were damaging to her momentum. By the closing weeks of the nonpartisan primary election campaign, Michelle Wu was seen as the front-runner, with Janey being perceived as competing with Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi George for a second-place finish.

The video her campaign had released at its launch was noted for playing-up her acting incumbency, setting a tone for her campaign, which leaned heavily into her acting incumbency. Janey made a deliberate effort to avoid use of the title "acting mayor", promoting herself as being the "mayor". In late-August, Joe Battenfeld of the Boston Herald characterized Janey as having run a "Rose Garden campaign", emphasizing her acting incumbency through weekly press conferences and playing a visible role in the city's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a post mortem look at Janey's campaign, Joan Vennochi of The Boston Globe similarly described Janey as having taken a "Rose Garden strategy", speculating that she had patterned such an approach after Tom Menino's similar approach as acting mayor, which won then-acting mayor Menino the 1993 Boston mayoral election. Vennochi argued that, unlike Menino, Janey had been cautious in governing, and, "didn’t define herself or her plans for a future administration", and had been "carefully scripted" in press conferences, outside of her controversial off-hand remarks vaccine passports. Similarly, shortly ahead of the preliminary election, Ellen Barry of The New York Times had written that, as acting mayor, Janey had, "been cautious in her new role, sidestepping hot-button issues that could hurt her in the general election, and remaining largely scripted in public appearances." It was noted in a September 1 article in The Boston Globe that Janey had been absent at 30 out of 60 candidate events such as forums, town halls, and one-on-one interviews to which all of the major candidates had been invited, while each of the other major candidates had attended nearly all of these events.

There was an, ultimately unsuccessful, effort by some Janey supporters to coalesce black support around Janey's candidacy, and away from the other two black candidates (Andrea Campbell and John Barros)

In late August, Janey began airing her first television advertisements.

For her platform, Janey had outlined what she called the "HEART Agenda", with "HEART" being an acronym for housing, education, accountability, recover/resiliency, and transportation. Originally, like the other major candidates, with the exception of Michelle Wu, Janey opposed rent control. However, in August, she changed her stance on the issue, and sided in favor of it being made an option for the city to potentially implement rent control. Janey's platform called for an "equitable" recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Janey conceded the election shortly after midnight on the day after the primary election, when very little of the vote total had been released. When the votes finished being counted, she had placed fourth. Janey's defeat made her the first incumbent of any kind since 1949 to lose a Boston mayoral election.

On September 25, Janey endorsed Michelle Wu for the general election.

Personal life

Janey is African American.

Janey lives in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

She gave birth at age 16 to a daughter, Kimesha, who now works in financial literacy and realty. Kimesha is mother to Janey's three grandchildren.

Awards

In 2015, Janey received the Boston NAACP Difference Maker Award. In January 2020, she received the Hubie Jones Award from the Boston Children's Chorus.

Electoral history

City Council

2017 Boston City Council 7th district election
Candidate	Primary election		General election
	Votes	%	Votes	%
Kim Janey	1,534	25.00	4,942	55.47
Rufus J. Faulk	719	11.72	3,856	43.28
Deeqo M. Jibril	605	9.86
Domonique A. Williams	593	9.66
Charles Clemmons Muhammad	423	6.89
Roy Owens	370	6.03	29	0.33
Jose Lopez	363	5.92
Brian S. Keith	348	5.67
Hassan A. Williams	285	4.65
Joao Gomes Depina	299	4.87
Carlos Tony Henriquez	263	4.29
Angelina Magdalena Camacho	247	4.03
Steven A. Wise	64	1.04
all others	23	0.38	83	0.93
Total	6,136	100	8,910	100

write-in votes

2019 Boston City Council 7th district election
Candidate	Primary election		General election
	Votes	%	Votes	%
Kim Janey (incumbent)	2,147	69.96	3,856	74.47
Roy Owens Sr.	517	16.85	1,296	25.03
Valarie Hope Rust	381	12.42
all others	24	7.82	53	1.02
Total	3,069	100	5,178	100

write-in votes

Mayor

2021 Boston mayoral election
Candidate	Primary election		General election
	Votes	%	Votes	%
Michelle Wu	35,888	33.36	TBD	TBD
Annissa Essaibi George	24,186	22.48	TBD	TBD
Andrea Campbell	21,221	19.72
Kim Janey (acting incumbent)	20,946	19.47
John Barros	3,436	3.19
Robert Cappucci	1,175	1.09
Jon Santiago (withdrawn)	364	0.34
Richard Spagnuolo	282	0.26
Write-ins	94	0.09	TBD	TBD
Total	107,592	100	TBD	TBD

Note:2021 Boston mayoral primary results are not yet certified

See also

• History of African Americans in Boston
• List of first African-American mayors

External links

• Official website
• Kim Janey on Twitter

Political offices
Preceded by Andrea Campbell	President of the Boston City Council 2020–present	Succeeded by Matt O'Malley Acting
Preceded by Marty Walsh	Mayor of Boston Acting 2021–present	Succeeded by Michelle Wu Elect