This Twin Cities suburb just made it harder for residents to petition for an audit

Suburbanites have plenty of outlets to vent their frustrations, from community meetings to the occasional barb-strewn social media post. But one city in Dakota County just made it harder for residents to ask their elected officials for an audit.

West St. Paul amended its city charter earlier this month, increasing the number of people needed to successfully petition the City Council to ask the state for an audit from 100 voters to 5% of registered voters — or about 570 people.

It’s a wonky, in-the-weeds change, but city officials and citizens say it matters. West St. Paul leaders hope the higher threshold helps the city avoid incurring steep bills for audits-by-petition, an accountability mechanism that neighbors have rarely, if ever, used.

Watchdogs, however, worry about the message the move might send when trust in government remains low.

The decision also reflects the decentralized nature of Twin Cities suburbs.

There’s no across-the-board local policy for audits-by-petition, with cities requiring citizens to rack up different numbers of signatures for successful campaigns to their City Councils. Other cities exclude the practice from their charters entirely. And neither the Office of the State Auditor nor the League of Minnesota Cities track local rules for resident-led audits.

“There are opportunities to really bring local audit here in Minnesota up to the times,” said Noah McVay, a community advisor to the St. Paul Audit Committee.

State law stipulates that cities with populations exceeding 2,500 people must receive an annual financial audit.

But Minnesota offers other avenues for citizens seeking additional scrutiny of accounts: They can directly petition Blaha’s office with the support of 20% of people who voted in the last presidential election. Or they can ask the “governing body” of a local government — think a City Council — to ask the state auditor to inspect city finances.

West St. Paul’s charter amendment essentially changes a step in the process of the latter option, quintupling the number of voters required to push the City Council to ask the state for an audit in the south metro city of more than 21,000 people.

City Manager Nate Burkett said a member of the charter commission — an eleven-person body charged with reviewing what’s essentially West St. Paul’s constitution — initially proposed “modernizing” the charter.

In the member’s telling, 100 people proved too low a bar for an audit that could cost the city as much as $50,000. Plus, Burkett added, the language surrounding audits-by-petition in West St. Paul has remained unchanged since at least the 1960s.

And as far as the city manager knows, no one has ever petitioned the City Council to press the state for an audit. In fact, Burkett said the last time neighbors used the charter’s provision on petitions was the late 1990s; people protested a road change that elected officials approved during the construction of the Northern Service Center, though the referendum ultimately failed.

West St. Paul’s new rule hasn’t generated much attention beyond council chambers. But people who closely follow the oversight of local spending have plenty to say about what it might signal for auditing in Minnesota.

That includes McVay, an aspiring auditor currently earning a master’s degree in accounting and another degree in public policy and administration.

McVay believes local governments in Minnesota should be subject not just to financial audits, but performance audits — reviews that determine if an organization is running efficiently.

“They look at internal controls and compliance with laws and regulations,” he said. “We just focus on financial audits, which is very much stuck in the 1990s.”

“Maybe the appearance to the average voter is, they don’t want to have to pay for an expensive audit because they just don’t want to be audited,” he said.