Betsy Hodges for City Council

August 30, 2009

Last week in the Committee I chair and at the City Council I had a matter of law before me that has been controversial.

This summer over 17,000 people signed a petition asking for a ballot measure to grant the Park Board the ability to raise your property taxes independent of the City enterprise, in effect creating a new unit of government.

Whether or not I agree with that proposal was not the question before me as a Council Member.

The question before me was whether the action proposed was constitutional, whether it pre-empted state statute, and whether it violated public policy.

Those are the criteria the Council needed to use to determine whether or not to put the initiative on the ballot. If it violated any one of those criteria, then we should not put it on the ballot.

The unequivocal determination of our City Attorney was that this initiative violated all three of the criteria.  The capacity to create a unit of government lies in the hands of the State, not the City. http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/council/2009-meetings/home/20090828.asp

Period.

 I took an oath of office to uphold the Constitutions of the State of Minnesota and the United States of America.  I could not simultaneously uphold that oath and vote to put the Parks' initiative on the ballot.  I assure you, had it been lawful I would have voted to put it on the ballot, whatever my feelings about the policy itself would be in the end.  It is no small matter to inform 17,000 people that the document they signed in good faith proposed to violate the laws of the state.  But it did.

One question has been raised, since I am Chair of the committee where the issue first came to Council.  Why didn't I let folks speak?

Had the Council been creating a law, public testimony would have been entirely appropriate.  That is, in part, what public hearings are for.  But we were not creating law - we were getting an interpretation of the law from our attorney, and asking questions about that interpretation.  A public hearing is inappropriate in that circumstance.  Information provided by the legal counsel for other entities should and did serve to inform and inspire the questions we asked of our own attorney, not spawn a debate about the interpretation of the law. Those debates have other venues where they are appropriate. 

The effect of the action we took is that the charter and statutory relationship between the City enterprise and the Minneapolis Parks remains at the status quo.  Moving forward, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board will remain as it has been for over 100 years - independent in its parks policies, inter-dependent with the City in terms of fiscal policy.  I support that status quo and the current independence of the Park Board.

Moreover, attempts to consolidate the Parks with the City enterprise - which I emphatically did not and do not support - have failed at every level.

I have worked very hard over the last four years to improve the City's relationship with the Parks.  I have spent countless hours negotiating on areas of difference. I successfully passed through the City and the Park Board (as well as the School Board) a resolution that outlined new ways to systematize our communication.  And I have and continue to reach out to my colleagues on the Park Board about the toughest issues about which we disagree.  I will continue to do that.  If I support the current relationship we have with the Parks, I must also do my best to make it as functional as possible - within the law.  Our City's future rests on it.