A day after the St. Paul City Council voted unanimously to override the mayor’s vetoes on next year’s budget, it is unknown what will happen next as both sides offer different legal interpretations.
Mayor Melvin Carter’s office said Friday it will have the city’s Office of Financial Services upload its version of the 2025 budget into the city’s financial system so the funds are ready by Jan. 1.
Meanwhile, Council President Mitra Jalali said on Friday that their version of “the budget is complete. There is no more procedural back and forth required. … The council’s position is that we acted within our authority to override (the) very last vetoes that we received from the mayor.
The Minnesota Department of Revenue says local governments must submit their property tax assessment report to them by December 30 each year. The St. Paul City Council approved the 2025 budget on Dec. 11, which set the property tax levy at 5.9%.
Carter’s vetoes on Wednesday do not change the levy but move money within the budget.
Carter points to the St. Paul City Charter, which states that approval of budgets and certification of tax assessments must occur no later than 12 days before the date for which property tax certification is required in accordance with state law. Subtracting 12 days from Dec. 30, Carter said Thursday that the City Council should have taken action on Dec. 18, which was Wednesday.
View outside the town hall
Peter Butler, a financial analyst for the city of St. Paul 20 years ago, wrote in an email to the City Council Thursday evening that they properly met the requirements of the city charter when they passed the budget and approved the levy on Dec. 11 . .
“A veto is an action regarding the mayor’s role in approving a resolution or ordinance adopted by the council. Overriding the Mayor’s veto essentially means that the budget passed on December 11, 2024 is now approved,” wrote Butler, who recently led the effort in St. Paul to move municipal elections from odd years to move the even years so that they overlap with the presidential elections. elections.
Kathy Lantry, a former city council member and president, said that when Randy Kelly was mayor from 2002 to 2006, they had “some real disagreements over the budget,” but it never got to the point where the budget is now “because we would run out of time , and then there’s all that legal stuff that no one wanted to deal with, because the city has to function.”
She says she doesn’t know who is right and how this will be resolved. Still, the “city budget … is flexible” within the budgeted amount, Lantry said, and the St. Paul city charter says the mayor “shall direct and supervise the administration of all departments.”
“It’s not called a strong mayor system for nothing,” Lantry added.
The Council is not considering legal action
When asked Friday if the council was considering taking legal action regarding the budget, Jalali said, “I see that no legal action can be taken.”
“This is the last of these many local train rides, and it has arrived at the station,” she said. “I can’t speak for the government, but this doesn’t even come to the attention of the council because we acted within our powers and finalized the budget.”
The mayor’s office, meanwhile, is “finalizing 2025 operational planning as outlined in the mayor’s letter to the City Council, including instituting a hiring and contract freeze,” Emily Buss, Carter’s director of communications, said in a statement. “The city’s Office of Financial Services shall submit budget documents as of the December 18 deadline, pursuant to charter and state law. The city will submit all required certifications to the county and state by December 30.”
The budget approved by the City Council on Dec. 11 keeps next year’s property tax levy at 5.9%, which is significantly less than the 7.9% increase the mayor proposed in August.
To accomplish that, the city’s 2025 budget included $1.2 million in cuts to planned police funding, with city documents citing “non-emergency police overtime” as a likely source.
Vetos
Carter’s vetoes canceled nearly $2 million in spending to renovate City Council offices, among other planned expenditures. He said he would use that money and the additional savings to secure funding for police overtime and fund a director-level position for the city’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity.
The City Council unanimously overturned all of Carter’s vetoes during a meeting Thursday afternoon.
Carter wrote in the letter to the City Council on Wednesday that Office of Financial Services staff had reviewed the City Council’s approved 2025 budget and “identified significant issues, including primarily the use of $2,396,503 in unattainable savings to fund core operations of to finance the city.”
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He emailed the City Council on Monday about his concerns, “along with an urgent request” for the City Council to take action on the budget at Wednesday’s meeting, he noted in his letter that day. He said he has not received any responses to Monday’s email and that the City Council postponed Wednesday’s meeting without any budget changes.
“Since the legal deadline for final decisions regarding next year’s budget is set in the City Charter… on… (Wednesday, December 18, 2024), the City Council has essentially run out the clock on its own ability to remedy these shortcomings, leaving administrative action as our only remaining option,” he wrote.
Jalali said the council’s working relationship with the mayor remains intact.
“The budget … consists of 99% agreement or acceptance of what the council has passed and responded to,” she said. “There are so many investments that the mayor has proposed that we have said yes to and that we will implement together. … We have approved a budget for our community for next year.”
