Is it against state law for department heads to ask for more money than they’re being given? Maybe, maybe not, and no one knows because it’s never really been tested.

Jill Murray Grady, attorney for the district, spoke to the School Committee Wednesday night about the legal ramifications of Anna Nolin asking for more money than the mayor is allocating and the School Committee voting to approve Nolin’s budget request.

“Overall big picture is that an unknown, whether it may be right or wrong, is always a risk,” Murray Grady said.

As the School Committee was contemplating Nolin’s budget—which keeps services level and comes in at a couple million dollars more than what Mayor Ruthanne Fuller has allocated for the schools—the mayor’s administration was cautioning that the School Committee passing Nolin’s budget would be illegal.

Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 44 Section 31 states that:

“No department financed by municipal revenue, or in whole or in part by taxation, of any city or town, except Boston, shall incur a liability in excess of the appropriation made for the use of such department, each item recommended by the mayor and voted by the council in cities, and each item voted by the town meeting in towns, being considered as a separate appropriation, except in cases of major disaster, including, but not limited to, flood, drought, fire, hurricane, earthquake, storm or other catastrophe, whether natural or otherwise, which poses an immediate threat to the health or safety of persons or property, and then only upon a declaration by the governor of a state of emergency with respect to the disaster or by a vote in a city of two-thirds of the members of the city council, and in a town by a majority vote of all the selectmen.”

The part that reads “incur liability” is what’s unclear, because, according to Murray Grady, it’s never been defined in statute or case law.

“So the prudent advice from our outside counsel was that, while the term “incur liability” was never defined and it may not mean what you adopt as a budget exactly, there’s always risk in an unknown and risk in litigation,” Murray Grady said.

There’s a legal mandate for cities and towns to pass a balanced budget. But what about departments within a city? If the school budget is a request and not an allocation, is anyone incurring a liability at that time?

“The recommendation from counsel was to find a way to make the numbers equal,” School Committee Chair Chris Brezski said.

Nolin said she had spoken with Newton Comptroller Steve Curley to understand what would happen if the School Committee sticks with its higher-than-allocated budget approval.

“The comptroller cannot create a chart of accounts that has numbers higher than the allocation that is allowed by the city,” Nolin said. “So, operationally, what would happen is he would simply reduce the budget by the amount in order to make the numbers comply.”

And the schools can’t start spending money until the comptroller has a set of accounts that match the mayor’s budget.

Brezski and Nolin submitted a compromise proposal to the mayor a few weeks ago, which the mayor rejected.

That proposal called for NPS to assume $670,000 of risk, remove $836,000 related to pending litigation for full-time kindergarten aids (to be paid with Education Stabilization Fund money if the court rules against the district in that case), and find $1 million of efficiencies and cuts, with the mayor to allocate $1.56 million in free cash as well as $500,000 from the Education Stabilization Fund.

The mayor’s FY2026 budget now heads to the City Council for a vote. Newton’s City Charter doesn’t give them much budgeting authority, however. While the City Council can make cuts to the budget, it can’t increase or reject it.

Three years ago, the City Council rejected Fuller’s FY2023 budget (13 councilors voted against it) because many councilors wanted more money for the schools. But that vote was mainly symbolic, as the mayor’s budget went into effect that summer anyway.