<http://southsidepride.com/city-council-blocks-our-right-to-vote/>
The City Council voted on Friday, Aug. 5, to deny petitions to allow us to vote
on two proposals that would greatly benefit the public welfare. One proposal
would have required Minneapolis police officers to carry insurance so the city
wouldn’t have to pay out damages when a court rules that an officer acted
improperly and harmfully. A second proposal would have required employers of
500 or fewer employees to pay workers $15 an hour in six years, (2022).
All City Council members and the mayor are required to take an oath of office
when they are sworn in to assume their duties. They swear to defend the
Constitution, Minnesota state laws and the Minneapolis City Charter, and they
swear to protect the public welfare.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all of us the right to
petition our government for redress of grievances, and the Tenth Amendment
says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to
the people.”
The state of Minnesota granted to the City of Minneapolis a Home Rule Charter
that lets the city make its own rules for running things like streets and parks
and police and zoning and laws governing social behavior and taxes. And when
St. Anthony and Minneapolis joined in 1872 they ratified an agreement that
insisted that people have the right to change their charter through petition
and referendum.
They were very democratic, the early Minneapolis pioneers. Starting out, they
had three City Council members from each ward. Then that got reduced to two
council members, and now it’s down to one. The mayor and council members
served two-year terms back then and now it’s four. The city was run by
volunteers doing their civic duty back then. Today, the Minneapolis City
Council is made up of the kind of New Democrat described in Thomas Frank’s new
book, “Listen, Liberal.” They’re hedge fund managers with the limited empathy
of Narcissus, staring at their own reflection in a pool.
Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled
Oh, man is opposed to fair play
He wants it all and he wants it his way
Now, there’s a woman on my block
She just sit there as the night grows still
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?
—Bob Dylan
Jacob Frey is the perfect New Democrat. He’s dashing, good looking, adorable,
fashionably liberal on social issues but a bean counter on economic issues. He
told Jon Tevlin of the Star Tribune “Legislation by referendum is putting hard
decisions to the voters. This is my job, I’m paid to do it. I’m continually
trying to study every cause and the impact it has on the city. People have jobs
and family and extracurricular activities. They can’t be expected to dive into
every complex issue.”
There it is. He said it. He thinks he’s smarter than we are. He thinks it takes
a slick professional hedge fund manager to run things, so we should just shut
up and be grateful.
More than 15,000 people petitioned the city for an insurance requirement for
police officers to protect the city from lawsuits. Jacob Frey and nine other
members of the City Council rejected their petition. Their mouthpiece, the
city attorney, said it was inappropriate for the City Charter. She said it was
inappropriate because her employers—the mayor and the City Council—wanted her
to say that. They don’t think it’s appropriate for them to give up some of
their power.
Only three council members heard the voices of the 15,000 petitioners and voted
to let that voice be heard in November. Southside Council Members Cam Gordon,
Alondra Cano and Andrew Johnson voted for the public welfare on the question of
insurance for police officers.
Cam Gordon and Alondra Cano voted to defend the public welfare by allowing
voters to decide whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2022.
Eleven of their fellow council members voted to deny voters the right to decide
that question.
Next year is election year for the city. The mayor and the City Council are
going to be coming to us asking for our vote.
Mayor Rybak was asked why he wouldn’t allow a referendum on a new Vikings
Stadium even though the cost to city taxpayers was going to be hundreds of
millions of dollars, and the Minneapolis City Charter says no city funds can be
approved for a sports stadium if the cost is more than $10 million (and in
another place it says $15 million) without a referendum. Rybak said, “My
re-election next year will be the referendum.” And, of course, next year he
decided he wouldn’t run for re-election.
Hopefully, some of our current city officials will re-examine their oath to
protect and defend the public welfare and either help us get insurance
liability for the police and a living minimum wage or decide that the burden of
the poor and beaten is too great a burden for them to carry, and it would be
best for everyone if those officials would return to private life with all the
added skills and contacts they’ve accumulated in their tenure.
Statement from the Committee for Professional Policing
Minneapolis city officials are working overtime to uphold the status quo. They
have manipulated the charter amendment process and skated around both
long-standing city rules and state law in an effort to keep our Police
Insurance Amendment off the November ballot. And they’re hoping you don’t
notice.
The City Charter is the “Constitution” of Minneapolis. It guides our city’s
governance and policymaking. Under state law, the City Charter may be amended
by a citizen petition. This is no easy task: our campaign had to collect at
least 6,869 signatures from Minneapolis registered voters to secure a spot on
the Nov. 8 ballot. Our grassroots campaign collected over 15,000 petition
signatures.
Our Police Insurance Amendment would require police officers to carry
professional liability insurance to reduce police misconduct and brutality.
This would give rogue officers a financial consequence for their actions,
making our city safer from police violence.
The city can cover the base rate of the insurance for all officers, but any
premium increases due to a history of misconduct must be paid for by the
officer. That means good cops aren’t punished, but instead receive a new
benefit—guaranteed insurance coverage (the city occasionally refuses to cover
officers when they are sued).
Even though we have collected the required number of signatures, our Police
Insurance Amendment was blocked from the ballot by the City Council. The was
the final step of a long stalling campaign waged by the city establishment, an
intentional effort to keep us off the ballot and to undermine the power of the
courts. By “kicking the can down the road,” the City Council has left us only
three weeks to win our lawsuit that would protect the voting rights of the
community.
On July 28, Minneapolis City Attorney Susan Segal formally advised the City
Council to block our Police Insurance Amendment from the ballot. She said State
law requires employers to cover their employees when they are acting within the
scope of their employment. No one is disputing that. But Segal strongly implied
that committing misconduct is part of an officer’s job—and because of that,
concluded that taxpayers must bail out officers when they commit misconduct.
Seriously? Because our amendment expressly forbids the city from issuing these
taxpayer-funded misconduct bailouts, Segal falsely claimed it was illegal.
Unfortunately, the City Council relied on this shoddy opinion, and illegally
voted to block our amendment from the ballot. This left us no choice but to go
to court. Our lawsuit, which asks the court to place the Police Insurance
Amendment on the ballot, was filed the same day as the illegal vote. We ask the
community to stand with us as we fight to protect your voting rights and to
ensure a fair process for future charter amendment proposals.
For more information about the Committee for Professional Policing visit our
website at http://insurethepolice.org/ <http://insurethepolice.org/> and “like”
us at http://facebook.com/insurethepolice
<http://facebook.com/insurethepolice> The city may have the fancy lawyers and
the money, but we’ve got the people—and the law—on our side.
Statement from 15 Now Minnesota
BY GINGER JENTZEN
The Twin Cities are home to 17 Fortune 500 companies—the highest concentration
in the country—yet also the worst racial inequities in the nation. A staggering
48 percent of black people in Minneapolis live in poverty, compared to 13
percent of white people.
It’s become clear that wealthy corporations like US Bank and Target pull the
strings at City Hall. A wage of $15/hour would impact over 100,000 workers,
predominantly women and workers of color, and put almost a billion dollars a
year into the hands of working people.
City Attorney Susan Segal gave cover to the City Council’s vote with a legal
opinion stating the minimum wage isn’t one of the city’s core functions and
shouldn’t be in the charter. This same city attorney raised an obscure legal
argument in 2012 to bypass a charter provision stating stadium subsidies
require approval by referendum. When big business money was on the line, the
attorney sought to work around the charter, but if put to the people, polls
showed that public funding for the stadium would likely have lost (Star Tribune
3/12/12). Faced with a $15 minimum wage, the city attorney encouraged the
council to defend poverty pay.
Now, low wage workers are suing the city, demanding the courts overturn the
council’s decision and put $15 on the November ballot. As Tyler Vasseur, a
minimum wage worker at Jimmy John’s and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said: “Mayor
Hodges and many of you on the council were voted in to fight this city’s
worst-in-the-nation racial inequities. Yet in the two years you have been
here, you have done little to address these problems. You have done nothing to
address poverty wages.”
The court case will need to be settled by Aug. 26 to ensure the referendum
appears on the November ballot.
The “$15 for Minneapolis” legal team of local and national attorneys made the
case publicly that increasing the wage fits within the “general welfare powers”
of the city’s charter. When it comes to minimum wage, big business leverages
its power through backroom deals and legal maneuvering rather than coming out
against a popular proposal like $15/hr. The city attorney’s legal opinion gave
City Hall clearance to take power away from us and keep it with the downtown
business interests.
We’ll see you in court and at the ballot box.
Help our campaign to take on the Democratic Party Establishment and big
business by visiting Votefor15MN.org today!