A local Republican leader says a progressive Boston city councilor reneged on her promise to allow a panel of opponents to testify at an upcoming hearing weighing voting rights for immigrants with “legal status” but without full citizenship.

Kendra Lara, the city councilor pushing for the policy change, said that’s not the case — her commitment, she said, was to allow time for the opponent to speak during public testimony in the first hour of a Tuesday afternoon Council hearing.

The matter stems from an exchange on WBZ NewsRadio’s “Nightside with Dan Rea,” where Lara, a progressive Democrat, was a guest last Thursday. Lou Murray, chairman of Ward 20 Republican Committee of West Roxbury, called into the program to ask whether Lara would “allow someone who’s in opposition to put a panel together and testify” against her proposed home rule petition.

“What happens, people that don’t know, politicians in Massachusetts hold a hearing,” Murray said on the radio segment. “They staff the thing for hours and hours and hours — it’s people that are in favor of their proposal.”

Murray told the Herald that he had put together a panel of experts who were willing to testify in opposition, including two “citizens of Boston” and an attorney “specializing in voting rights,” but was told by a City Council staffer Monday that he was instead being signed up to speak during public testimony.

His three main points of contention are that such a change would be “unconstitutional,” dilute the voting rights of minorities, and further erode trust in local elections, he said, pointing to the low voter turnout seen last month. The turnout, according to the city’s Election Department, was 18.9%.

Lara says denying immigrants with legal status the right to vote is a “violation of one of our foundational American principles,” telling the Herald she had never committed to a separate panel for opposition on her radio appearance.

“We agreed to give him space to give public testimony within the first hour as he requested,” Lara said Monday. “Public testimony is always open to anyone and the City Council staff has reached out to him today to confirm.”

Similarly, on the radio segment, Lara said, “If you’re requesting in the first hour, what I can make a commitment to do is hear public testimony before we start with the panels, and I’m more than happy to do that.”

Allowing public testimony early in a Council hearing is “done often,” Lara said, in response to whether an exception was made based on Murray’s request.

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Lara’s proposed home rule petition, put forward as a hearing order at a Council meeting last month, drew support from several of her colleagues, but was met with legal concerns from Councilor-at-Large Michael Flaherty.

Flaherty cautioned against the “serious ramifications” that could arise by extending voting rights to non-citizens, who could “seriously jeopardize their opportunity to become a legal citizen” by mistakenly voting in state or federal elections. The proposed change would only apply to city elections.

Lara’s petition, however, points to similar action taken by 15 other municipalities across the country as of January 2022, and makes the case for extending voting rights to a group of non-citizens that contributes heavily to the city economy, by paying on average $2.3 billion in taxes annually and holding roughly $6 billion in “collective spending power.”