Rent Control in Saint Paul: Score Melvin Carter 2, City Council 0

 

Yet again Mayor Melvin Carter has outplayed City Council in his posturing on the recently adopted rent control  ordinance.  No matter what the Council does they look like losers and the Mayor walks away the political winner.

            Were this the first time Council was outmaneuvered it would be  shame on Carter.  But it is the second time this year Council played it wrong so shame on it.

            Earlier this year City Council  affirmed a decision by the Planning Commission to deny a permit to Alatus to develop market-rate housing on the Wilder property located at Lexington and Grand. Its decision was quasi-judicial and under most readings of Minnesota law, it was not subject to a mayoral veto.  Mayor Carter then asked the Council to memorialize the decision in a formal resolution which the mayor then vetoed (as he is allowed to do under the law).  Carter was able to turn an action by Council over which he had questionable authority to override into one which he did have authority to act.   Lacking the votes to override the veto or the will or resources to legally challenge Carter, Council gave the mayor a political victory.  Carter could argue he was championing housing and his veto sent a signal to developers during the election that he was on their side and presumably open to taking their money (which he had already done from individuals at Alatus and Wilder).  He comes out looking good, Council inept.

            Enter rent control in Saint Paul.

            Several months ago, supporters of rent control in Saint Paul secured enough signatures to place on the ballot on November 3, 2021, a proposed rent control ordinance.  It qualified for the ballot on or around June 15, 2021—nearly five months before election day.  Council knew, or should have known, it was on the ballot.   How could they not know?  They had ample opportunity to study it.  Any reasonably prudent Council would have taken some time to ask the “What if?” question.  By that, Council should have asked what if the voters approve rent control, what’s next?  When would it take effect?  How will it be enforced?  Who will enforce it?  How much money and what resources will be needed?  All these are questions the Council should have considered  but there is no indication they did, even though one could have predicted that the rent control proposal might be popular and pass.

            Enter Mayor Carter.  In October, merely a few weeks before the election, Carter announces he will vote yes on rent control but then seek to amend the proposal to exempt new construction, despite the fact that a legal opinion by the City attorney suggested that the ballot proposition probably could not be altered for at least one year under local law.  Both moves by Carter were politically smart.  Carter aligns himself as a populist  and makes it looks like he cares about renters by endorsing the proposal, thereby helping him in his re-election bid, while also sending a signal to developers he is on their side (and of course open to their political donations and support).

            Rent control passes and City Council is shocked.  It is not ready for it.  It has lots of questions—many of which it was negligent not to consider during the previous five months when  they knew it had qualified for the ballot and it could pass.  As confusion mounts over the rent  control measure, Mayor Carter is again asking Council to exempt new construction, contending that the new ordinance does not specifically refer to it.  Council has again been outmaneuvered.

            By asking Council to change the ordinance Carter has placed them in a position of doing something illegal (change the law) and run a court challenge from supporters.  Additionally, if they change the law they raise the possibility of encouraging the rath of voters who supported it when the Council members are up for re-election in 2023.  Do nothing to exempt new construction and  if developers stick to their promise to halt new projects, it is City Council that is at fault for any economic damage to Saint Paul.  Council loses no matter what.

            Carter comes out in favor of rent control and then asks to amend it.  He wins as an apparent populist by supporting it.  His call to amend it will be forgotten by most of the voters but remembered by developers.  He can tell them he is on their side and that it is the terrible City Council that failed to act if they do not vote to exempt it.  If Council does act  to exempt he then gets to blame them  for upending the will of the voters. Carter gets to be populist and a friend to developers at the same time.  Effectively, Carter has shifted the blame to the City Council while he comes out of this politically looking good.

 

The Gentrification of Midway-Rondo in Saint Paul (and why Mayor Carter’s recent veto is illegal and enabling it).

 

Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s veto of the City Council vote to deny the go ahead on the Alatus

housing plan at University and Lexington Avenue was wrong both legally and from a public policy perspective.  In its vote City Council was acting in its quasi-judicial capacity over which the mayor has no veto authority, and in allowing this housing project to go forward the mayor enabled the already rapid gentrification of the Midway corridor to continue.

The Wilder Foundation owns vacant land at the corner of Lexington and University Avenues in Saint Paul.  This is property in the Midway/Rondo neighborhood, and traditionally occupied by people of color.  It is also an area of concentrated poverty based on the 2040 Saint Paul Comprehensive plan.  Yet is located along the central corridor of the light rail line which has rapidly gentrified in the last few years.  

            When the $1 billion light rail investment was made the intent was to encourage significant private investment, which it has, yet that investment has hardly benefited the neighbors.  Once undervalued land has become the target of acquisition and development as traditional neighborhood business have been forced out, selling their property to developers who are turning it into business and housing for more affluent individuals, making the area from Lexington west a de facto suburb for Minneapolis.  The building of the soccer stadium at University and Snelling and the housing plans for the closed shopping center there all point to a development strategy of pushing out the poor and people of color and replacing them with middle class.  This is a textbook case of what gentrification means, with other studies reaching this conclusion.

            The Alatus housing is part of this plan.  Wilder Foundation, which is supposed to care about individuals of modest means, sees a huge profit to be made in selling the land for development.  The Alatus project would site housing not for individuals with median incomes living in the area, but clearly to attract a more middle class or affluent base.  Such housing would be consistent with other development now occurring in the area, but it would not address the needs of the Rondo residents.  It would ignore their needs and place pressures on nearby by property to sell and eventually push gentrification further.  As a result, the Frogtown Neighborhood Association and others opposed the project, urging the Saint Paul Planning Commission to veto it.

            The Planning Commission vote was close, but it did oppose it.  The vote itself was fascinating because leading up to it there were long vacant slots on the Commission that the Mayor had not filled for nearly a year.  When he did do so it was close to the timing of his announcement for reelection and he staffed it with choice DFLers,  which the Frogtown Neighborhood Association opposed, in part, because they wanted their own appointees.  This was a classic DFL intraparty fight over political patronage.

            After the Planning Commission vote Saint Paul City Council held a hearing, affirming the Planning Commission vote, of which Carter then vetoed it claiming the city needs housing of lots of different kinds.  Similar statements were voiced by the three council members who voted in favor of the Alatus housing.  Coincidentally the three members came from golden triangle of the city bordered south by I-94 and east by I-35.  This is the most affluent and white area of Saint Paul.  There is no debate Saint Paul needs more housing, and it would be good to develop more neighborhoods with mixed-income units to break up concentrated poverty.  But there is also an acute need to address a housing shortage and crisis for low to moderate income individuals.  The Alatus proposal mostly fails on these points.

            Mayor Carter has no legal authority to veto the Council action.  Years ago, I wrote an article contrasting what is called quasi-legislative and quasi-legislative hearings in Minnesota law.  In many cases where city councils act, they are operating in their legislative or quasi-legislative rolls.  This is the case when passing bills, raising taxes, doing a budget.  All this, under state law and in Saint Paul is subject to mayoral veto.  But in some cases, city councils are acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, serving as an appellate body to review decisions from commissions or other bodies below.  If acting in that capacity, mayors have no veto authority and disagreements with the council decisions go to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

            The City Council review of the Saint Paul Planning Commission Alatus project was a quasi-judicial review.  In cases such as Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy v. Metropolitan Council, Handicraft Block Limited Partnership v. City of Minneapolis, and Interstate Power Company v. Nobles County Board of Commissioners, the Minnesota Supreme Court said that an entity was acting in a quasi-judicial capacity when  it engaged  an “(1) investigation into a disputed claim and weighing of evidentiary facts; (2) application of those facts to a prescribed standard; and (3) a binding decision regarding the disputed claim.”    Even more specifically, Handicraft Block has declared city council reviews of decisions by planning commissions to quasi-judicial decisions, which are not subject to mayoral vetoes. 

In fact, council reviews and decisions on conditional use permits, variances, special use permits, and historic preservation have all been ruled quasi-judicial by the Minnesota courts.  While there is no specific Minnesota decision saying a mayor cannot veto a quasi-judicial decision, the logic  is clear. Other states, such as Florida in D.R. Horton, Inc.--Jacksonville v. Peyton, 959 So.2d 390 (2007), have reached a similar conclusion that mayoral vetoes do not extend to city council’s acting in a quasi-judicial capacity. No matter how one views it the logic of current case law is clear—in denying Alatus’ request to build on the Wilder site—the decision was quasi-judicial and not subject to mayoral veto.

            Mayor Carter’s veto of the council action should have no legal effect if precedent is accurate.  Whether anyone sues on this is a good question. But the political effect is different.  As noted, it does nothing to put breaks on Midway-Rondo gentrification.  Two, in an election year, it sends signals by the mayor to developers about where his priorities lie (and perhaps where he wishes to solicit campaign contributions for this and future election runs).

            Finally, as disclosure, let me make three points.  One, write this blog as someone who previously served as a city director of planning, zoning, and code enforcement and who also worked as a housing and economic planner for a community action agency. 

Two, in November 2017 after Melvin Carter was elected, I wrote him a letter from my perspective as a former planner, advising him among things that: “Neighborhoods need to be diversified.  Concentrated poverty neighborhoods are no good for anyone.  There needs to be a mix of people, incomes, and structures in every neighborhood… Make neighborhoods attractive for all to live and invest it.  Deconcentrating poverty is one step in making neighborhoods more opportunity based.  Thus, both place-based and mobility strategies are needed.”

Three, in January 2020, I applied for a vacant position on the Saint Paul Planning Commission with the endorsement of both Councilmembers Jane Prince and Rebecca Noecker.  Despite emails from my council member and me, the mayor’s office largely ignored my application.  Given the mayor’s veto, I largely see why.

Understanding the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Elections: First Draft

What did we learn from the Minneapolis and St. Paul elections, specifically with Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter, respectively, elected as the new mayors of the two cities?  The simple answer is that what happened in these two cities has significance well beyond their borders.

Turn first to Minneapolis.  It is less clear that this is an election endorsing Frey or voting for him than it was one rejecting the incumbent Betsy Hodges.  After the first round of voting Hodges received 18.1% of the first-choice votes, meaning more than 80% voted against her.  The voters clearly did not like her style, handling of issues such as police use of force or crime or her oversight of the construction on Nicollet Mall.  But that did not mean that any one candidate emerged as the alternative to her.  Council member Jacob Frey did not even receive 25% of the vote.  In fact, the top five candidates split up 96% of the vote, with each receive more than 15% of the vote.  

What emerged was a city polarized and divided.  It is not clear that Frey enjoys widespread support of most of the constituencies in the city, and he clear has a long way to go in terms of his ability to reach out to the business community.  In addition, given his lack of administrative experience and really, his general lack of experience in government (only his tenure as a city council member), and the fact that the mayor’s position in Minneapolis is relatively weak, it will be a challenge for him to govern.  This is especially the case when it looks also as if the city council will have several new comers and it too is divided.  Frey won less because of his positions (in many ways his positions were not so different from Hodges) and campaign and more because Hodges was unpopular, the opposition was divided, and he was the strongest of those who were not the mayor.

But perhaps one of the less appreciated or overlooked events that took place in the Minneapolis elections was that City Council President Barb Johnson lost.  This is an enormous blow and loss of institutional knowledge and skill in Minneapolis.  She held together a factional city council since 2006, and her loss means both a new mayor and council president taking over at the same time.  The challenge will be to figure out how to govern in Minneapolis.

St. Paul’s election was a surprise in the sense that almost everyone thought it would be a close election between Melvin Carter and Pat Harris. In the end Carter won for several reasons.  He had a better campaign, name recognition, and more DFL endorsements that were meaningful.  But also, Pat Harris’s campaign was not as good as many assumed.  But the real game-changer was an ad by the Police union (Building a Better St. Paul) that accused Melvin Carter’s stolen guns as being involved in crimes.  This was perceived as a Donald Trumpish type of race-baiting that backfired.  It energized many to vote and probably also turned away some from Pat Harris who was stuck.  If he fully disavowed the group and ad then he repudiated his base, if he did not act aggressively enough he would be seen as endorsing this attack.  In the end, he waffled, and it hurt him.

Electing Frey and Carter as mayors of the two largest cities in the state is significant for several reasons. First, they are young, and it signals a passing of the DFL leadership mantle to a new generation.  This started already in Minneapolis four years ago.  In St. Paul, with Carter elected and Coleman out, the latter may well be the last White Irish Catholic mayor in the city, recognizing the changing politics and demographics in that city.  Second, both are liberal.  There liberalism will push the two cities further to the left on a range of issues.  This will have an impact not just in the two cities, but both regionally and state-wide.  Regionally, if both cities move to establish living wages for employment in their towns it could have an impact in terms of how other cities in the region have to respond.  Additionally, if the two cities move further to the left, it potentially causes a political schism between the DFL there and across the rest of the state.  It also sets in motion a potential stronger urban-rural or DFL-Republican conflict in the state.

A Note on my Predictions

            So how well did I predict the mayoral elections in the two cities?  In the end I got some things right and some wrong.  There were no surveys or polls to use to help make election predictions, so I was shooting in the dark, so to speak.  In a September 21, 2017 blog I made the following predictions:

Predicted:

Frey 26%
Hodges 24%
Dehn 20%
Hoch 15%
Levy-Pounds 10%

Final first-choice votes

Frey 24.97%

Hoch 19.27%

Hodges 18.08%

Dehn 17.34%

Levy-Pounds 15.06%

The final order of votes after RCV was applied, had Frey winning, followed by Dehn, Hoch, Hodges, and then Levy-Pounds. I clearly overestimated support for Hodges and underestimated that for Hoch and Levy-Pounds.  I let you decide how good my predictions were.