St. Paul City Council disagreement reaches boiling point behind closed doors

It’s hard to tell whether water is boiling when staring at a pot with a lid on it — until it boils over, that is.

That analogy came to mind Wednesday, when a St. Paul City Council vote to replace former council President Mitra Jalali ended in a stalemate.

Because the council failed to come to an agreement on this interim replacement before its deadline, the appointment will now go to the mayor.

Two people — Jalali’s former aide Matt Privratsky and Union Park District Council member Lisa Nelson — were proposed to fill Jalali’s seat in the interim before residents get to cast votes in an August special election. Privratsky does not plan to run for the permanent seat and it is unclear if Nelson plans to. Both motions to move forward with the candidates were met with a split vote by the remaining council members, neither obtaining a majority. 

In the vote for Nelson, council members Hwa Jeong Kim, Nelsie Yang, Rebecca Noecker voted yes and Saura Jost, Anika Bowie, Cheniqua Johnson voted no. For Privratsky, Johnson and Jost voted yes and Kim, Yang, Bowie and Noecker voted no. 

But then the council meeting continued as usual. Within the last two weeks, a myriad of issues have brought about plenty of disagreement both among council members and between the council and the mayor’s office. Wednesday’s meeting was another major episode, with issues on the table including rent control and garbage pickup. 

The council unanimously approved the 90-day extension of Mayor Melvin Carter’s state of emergency around garbage pickup, which temporarily suspends zoning regulations to allow trash collection while the current zoning dispute is settled. The council also unanimously voted to move the process forward on two ordinances brought in tandem — one that would amend the city’s rent control ordinance to exempt properties built after 2004 (a proposal made by the mayor last year) and a tenant protection ordinance. This action means there will be a public hearing on these items at the next general council meeting on April 9. 

Things took a turn after those actions were concluded Wednesday.

Confusion followed council President Rebecca Noecker’s call for an impromptu recess midway through the meeting.

Most council members rose from their seats, including Noecker, Kim, Bowie and Johnson. Jost was calling into the meeting remotely and later said she didn’t know what was happening. Yang remained back in the chamber.

Deals that happen behind closed doors

The four who left the chamber did not all meet together during the recess. This is important because, if they had all met, the meeting would have constituted a quorum and could have been considered an unauthorized closed session. Instead, council members Noecker and Kim confirmed later that they met with council member Bowie. They said they were trying to confirm that Bowie understood what they were voting on during the portion of the meeting dedicated to filling Jalali’s seat. 

Pulling members of the media into her office while other members were elsewhere in the building during the recess, Johnson said she was not aware the council would be called into recess.

Johnson decried the decision to call a recess after holding virtually no conversation about the items publicly during council meetings.

“Community members have constantly asked for us to be transparent,” Johnson said. “They trust in our government elected officials to make decisions, sometimes easy ones and sometimes hard ones. But it is the deals that happen behind closed doors that repeat centuries of issues and disparities and lack of trust from community.”

For a while, Johnson said she has said very little about the process playing out to appoint the interim seat because she “thought it was really important to maintain a level of professionalism and decorum.”

Ultimately she said she saw the appointment process play out as it has “because of personal vendettas” and saw a need to speak publicly about what she experienced in the process. Specifically, Johnson said a member of the council reached out to her (she did not specify who) and said that if she voted for any other candidate than Privratsky for this seat, changes to the rent control ordinance would move forward. 

“I am incredibly concerned about the fact that we think it’s OK to exchange support for candidates for policy issues that committee members have been waiting for years for, and I genuinely don’t want to ever be in a decision where I’m having to choose between an interim council member and tenant protections,” Johnson said. “I don’t want that to be the discussion, and I’m not willing to have that be the arrangement here.” 

What happened during the recess 

After about a half-hour recess, the council reconvened. At the end of the meeting, council member Kim called a vote to bring back the consideration of appointing candidates. Once again the vote was 3-3 with council members Jost, Bowie and Johnson voting no. 

Before the vote was taken, there was further conversation around the process, including from council member Bowie who had met with Noecker and Kim during the recess. 

Bowie stated that she had made it clear her support was for Privratsky. 

“Our approach should be honoring the person who formally sat in the seat,” Bowie said. “That matters to me, and us playing a game of chess for a person who’s going to be here for four months, really does not reflect the role and the purpose of this very simple vote. We have big votes before us. And as a Ward 1 council member who borders with Ward 4, it’s very important who’s in this seat.”  

Bowie declined to comment further after the meeting concluded. 

Since no agreement was reached, Mayor Melvin Carter will now decide who fills the vacancy. 

After the meeting, council members Noecker and Kim stayed behind to clarify what happened. The two had met with council member Bowie after they said it seemed she might not have understood the vote they were making around the council appointment. The vote was specifically to “suspend the rules and then take a vote on the resolution,” Noecker said, noting that there was room for misunderstanding in the wording of the motion.

The specifics around the meaning of the motion itself were not all the council members talked about during the recess.

“Then, as I expected, council member Bowie then asked further questions about the decision for one candidate or against another candidate, so we then discussed the reasons why we support a particular candidate and not another candidate,” Noecker said. “Because after we discussed the need to suspend the rules, those questions came up. These conversations often do not just stay on one subject, which is why, again, we do need to have them without publicly discussing everybody’s dirty laundry.”

It’s the council’s process to maintain much of its internal discussion around interim candidates outside of chambers, Noecker said. This is to largely mitigate public scrutiny outside of the public interview of these candidates, she noted, because candidates aren’t expecting this kind of public scrutiny. 

“When people run for office, they run for office,” she said. “We all are ready to take all of the slings and arrows. We know what we’re signing up for. People who put themselves forward for these appointments are not expecting that.” 

The council seat does remain a public seat, but it isn’t the usual process of council to hold debate and conversation about the candidates publicly, she said. This is because, “when we communicate to them about the process, we’re clear about the steps that will be followed and what will be a public conversation.”

Prior to the meeting, Noecker said she believed the council was in agreement and there were enough votes to appoint one of the candidates. The candidate Noecker had brought forward was Lisa Nelson. 

“As of noon today (Wednesday), I had a commitment that we had four votes, and that was when that person was entered,” she said of Nelson. “When the vote to suspend the rules to bring that person forward failed, there was some concern about understanding of the process.” 

Building tensions

Tensions around the interim appointment first came to a head last week when council member Jost moved to name Privratsky to the interim seat while Noecker was absent on bereavement leave. 

Kim and Yang opposed the motion, saying the council had agreed to address the issue when all members could be present last Friday. When the Friday special meeting rolled around, Noecker adjourned after only three minutes, stating her disappointment in the council not having reached consensus.

Kim declined to comment on which interim candidates the council members supported, but she echoed that she believed on multiple occasions that there was a majority vote agreed to by council members. 

“What I will say is, as of Tuesday afternoon, when I found out that the council president had to be on bereavement, it was our understanding that we also had a consensus for a candidate then as well,” Kim said. “So it is to say that it is OK to change your mind, but we move forward on trust of our colleagues and going by what they say when they give us their word.” 

Reprinted courtesy of MinnPost.