Will Minneapolis charter changes make ballot? It's up to 15

After hearing the views of hundreds of Minneapolitans, a panel of 15 city charter commissioners is due to decide on Wednesday whether any of three far-reaching charter amendments should go to a November referendum.

The proposals could establish a city administrator position, abolish the city Park Board and allow the City Council to handle all tax-setting, borrowing and auditing functions for city government.

But the charter commissioners will be making their decision without any guidance from the charter on what threshold they should use in deciding whether to send proposals to voters. The votes cast by the court-appointed commissioners on Wednesday will be guided by the commissioners' personal sense of what's appropriate.

Whether a commissioner personally thinks a proposal is a good idea can enter into the decision, as it did when the commission narrowly decided not to put instant-runoff voting before voters. That candidate-ranking method became law for city elections after the City Council put it on the ballot and voters approved it.

As that example shows, there are several ways to amend the charter. That gives several options to the five council members who want to make operations of the Park and Recreation Board a city department, transfer powers of the city's Board of Estimate and Taxation to the council, and install a city administrator.

None of these proposals has achieved majority backing on the council, which would allow members to put the proposal on the ballot, although the administrator proposal reportedly is within one vote of garnering enough support. Council Member Paul Ostrow, a strategist for pro-amendment forces, said supporters of the amendments could also organize a petition campaign to request a referendum, but he prefers that the Charter Commission authorize a vote.

Whether it does may turn on how high a threshold individual commissioners set.

One of them, Margaret Dolan, said she'd prefer to err on the side of a high threshold, being conservative in what she is willing to put on the ballot. She said she isn't as impressed by how many people testify pro or con on a proposed amendment, given that turnouts can be organized. What she listens to is their reasoning.

The complexity of the current charter, on the other hand, prompts Commissioner Todd Ferrara to set a lower threshold than if the charter were simplified, as the commission has proposed to the council. Assuming a proposal is relevant to the charter, he said, "My bias is to let the voters weigh in on it."

Nevertheless, he added, "We're not supposed to necessarily go to public opinion. We're supposed to go by what makes the most long-term sense for the people of Minneapolis."

Commissioners exercised their discretion in 2004, when they declined to put a proposed medical marijuana question on the ballot.

Jim Bernstein, the commission's chair, said he's sensing that the proposal to create a city administrator position has the most support of the three ballot proposals, while the Park Board proposal has the most opposition. A survey of 600 randomly selected Minneapolis adults, questioned this spring for a foundation supporting city parks, found 76 percent supported keeping the Park Board in its current quasi-independent relationship with City Hall.

A 1982 orientation pamphlet for the Charter Commission's members calls the panel "a committee of citizens whose job it is to formulate charter proposals that they think the people want." It urges them to be open to new ideas, solicit reactions and keep in mind those they serve. "I think we're about to see what the threshold is," Bernstein said.

When voters have gotten to cast ballots on charter amendment proposals during the past 30 years, they've approved 13 and rejected 10.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438