Minneapolis City Council poised to reject Park Board referendum

Don Fraser and other proponents of park independence decry recommendation that the council not allow a vote.

By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune

Last update: August 27, 2009 - 9:05 PM

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Supporters of a Park Board independence proposal plan to go to court this afternoon if the Minneapolis City Council, meeting this morning, denies them a charter referendum.

Brian Rice, one of two attorneys who will argue for holding a charter referendum on the proposal, said a lawsuit has been drafted.

A council committee voted 4-2 Thursday to recommend that the proposal not be put to voters because of what the city attorney's office said are constitutional, statutory and public policy flaws that allow the council to deny a ballot spot. Betsy Hodges, Ralph Remington, Elizabeth Glidden and Paul Ostrow voted in the majority; Sandra Colvin Roy and Diane Hofstede dissented.

The proposal would ask voters to grant the Park Board status as a separate unit of local government, subject to powers to be defined by the Legislature.

The city attorney's office holds that one local unit of government can't create another and that the power is reserved to the Legislature. But attorney Fred Morrison, who would team with Rice to argue the case, holds that the Legislature delegated to chartered home-rule cities such as Minneapolis the power to devise forms of government.

Former Mayor Don Fraser, one of five former elected officials who sponsored the petition, took issue with Thursday's committee action. He said he was "a little startled and perplexed" that proponents didn't get a chance to make their case to the committee.

"I believe the zeal to kill this amendment without any semblance of a public hearing, a selective reading of the city attorney's opinion, and no acknowledgment of the potential bias of the council members who may want to keep all the financial powers in the hands of the City Council, has left me and perhaps others disappointed by the way this matter was considered and voted upon," Fraser told the council in an e-mail. Hodges told supporters that yesterday's meeting wasn't a public hearing.

"What they did today was cavalierly dismiss what 17,000 people petitioned to do," Rice said.

Supporters circulated petitions to put the matter on the ballot and obtained the required signatures, but the city attorney told the council that the legal flaws give members the option to refuse to do so.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438