Minneapolis City Council blocks November ballot question on voter referendum

Minneapolis voters will not weigh in this November on whether they want citizens to be able to change laws through a popular vote.

The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously Thursday to indefinitely postpone a ballot question aimed for this fall’s presidential election that would have asked voters whether they want the right to make city ordinances by citizen petition and popular vote, sometimes referred to as a popular referendum or ballot initiative.

Acknowledging that other council members needed more time to gather feedback from constituents and offer amendments, proposal author Council Member Robin Wonsley voluntarily withdrew it for this year, meaning voters won’t be seeing it on the Nov. 5 ballot.

“It seemed that most supported the ballot initiative and referendum broadly,” Wonsley said, “but several of my colleagues would like to have more time to better understand how these work, and to be better informed before fully making a good decision on this charter amendment.”

The “initiative and referendum charter amendment” would have given members of the public a chance to submit new laws (initiative) or appeal existing ones (referendum) to the voters by petition. To get an ordinance on the ballot, a “sponsoring committee” of five or more Minneapolis residents would need to collect signatures equal to at least 8% of those who voted in the preceding mayoral election.

The ballot question would require a simple majority to pass, and no ordinance adopted this way could be repealed for one year — a nod to the sanctity of popular will, explained Deputy Minneapolis City Attorney Erik Nilsson.

The process would exclude ordinances having anything to do with the budget, capital programs, appropriation of money, levying taxes, issuing bonds, setting salaries and zoning land.

In Minneapolis, feedback leading up to and during Monday’s public hearing on the matter was split along a philosophical line between those who want more direct democracy, and those who want it to stay purely representative.

Opponents of the ballot question predicted an uneducated public could be easily manipulated by a politically connected few to pass poorly vetted laws. Supporters argued that regular Minneapolitans should be trusted to vote in their best interests for measures otherwise suppressed by powerful lobbies.

Ultimately, a majority of council members felt they did not have enough time to work on the proposed charter amendment this year.

Wonsley gave notice of the proposal in January, and the council asked the City Attorney’s Office to draft an ordinance in February. On Monday, council members received that draft in committee and conducted a public hearing, leaving just two days to come up with any changes they might want to make before a vote scheduled at the full council meeting on Thursday morning.

It would have had to have been approved on Thursday in order to give the Charter Commission enough time for review before meeting a statutory deadline for submission to the county auditor and secretary of state.