A day after the St. Paul City Council unanimously voted to override the mayor’s line-item vetoes of next year’s budget, it’s unknown what will happen next because both sides are offering different legal interpretations.

Mayor Melvin Carter’s office said Friday it will have the city’s Office of Financial Services upload its version of the 2025 budget to the city’s financial system, so funds are ready on Jan. 1.

Meanwhile, Council President Mitra Jalali said Friday that their version of “the budget is complete. There’s no more procedural back and forth to be had. … The council’s position is we have acted within our authority to override (the) very last minute vetoes that we got” from the mayor.

Mitra Jalali (Courtesy photo)

The Minnesota Department of Revenue says local governments must submit their property tax levy report to them by Dec. 30 each year. The St. Paul city council approved the 2025 budget on Dec. 11 that set the property tax levy at 5.9%.

Carter’s line-item vetoes on Wednesday don’t change the levy, but move funds around within the budget.

Carter points to the St. Paul City Charter, which says adoption of budgets and certification of the tax levy are to happen no later than 12 days before the date requiring property tax certification in accordance with state law. Subtracting 12 days from Dec. 30, Carter said Thursday that the city council would have needed to take action on Dec. 18, which was Wednesday.

Views outside city hall

Peter Butler, who was a city of St. Paul financial analyst 20 years ago, wrote in a Thursday night email to the city council that they properly met the requirements of the city charter when they adopted the budget and certified the levy on Dec. 11.

“A veto is an action regarding the mayor’s role in approving any council-adopted resolution or ordinance. Overriding the mayor’s veto essentially means that the budget adopted on Dec. 11, 2024, is now approved,” wrote Butler, who most recently led the effort in St. Paul to move municipal elections from odd years to even years so they overlap with presidential elections.

Kathy Lantry, a long-time former city council member and president, said when Randy Kelly was mayor from 2002 to 2006 they had “some real disagreements about the budget,” but it never get to the point where the budget is now “because we were going to run out of time, and then it’s all this legal back-and-forth that nobody wanted to deal with because, the fact is, the city has to operate.”

Kathy Lantry (Courtesy of the city of St. Paul)

She said she doesn’t know who’s in the right and how it will be resolved. Still, the “city budget is … flexible” within the amount that is budgeted, Lantry said, and St. Paul city charter says the mayor “shall direct and supervise the administration of all departments.”

“It’s called a strong mayor system for a reason,” Lantry added.

Council not looking at legal action

Asked Friday if the council was looking at taking legal steps over the budget, Jalali said “there’s no legal action that I can see that can be taken.”

“This is the last of this many stop train ride, and it’s come to the station,” she said. “I can’t speak for the administration, but that’s not even in the realm of being contemplated from council because we have acted in our powers and finalized the budget.”

The mayor’s office, meanwhile, “is finalizing operational planning for 2025 as detailed in the mayor’s letter to the city council including instituting a hiring and contract freeze,” Emily Buss, Carter’s director of communications, said in a statement. “The city’s Office of Financial Services is submitting budget documents as of the Dec. 18 deadline, per charter and state law. The city will submit all required certifications to the county and state by Dec. 30.”

The budget approved by the council on Dec. 11 holds next year’s property tax levy to 5.9%, which is notably less than the 7.9% increase the mayor proposed in August.

To get there, the council’s 2025 budget included $1.2 million in cuts to planned police funding, with council documents identifying “non-emergency police overtime” as the likely source.

Vetoes

Carter’s vetoes canceled nearly $2 million in spending to remodel city council offices, among other planned expenses. He said he would use that money and additional savings to preserve funding for the police department’s overtime spending and fund a director-level position for the city’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity.

The city council unanimously reversed each of Carter’s vetoes in a Thursday afternoon meeting.

Carter wrote in Wednesday’s letter to the city council that Office of Financial Services staff had reviewed the council’s 2025 adopted budget and “identified significant issues, principally including the use of $2,396,503 in unattainable savings to finance core city operations.”

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He emailed the city council about his concerns on Monday, “along with an urgent request” for the council to take action to its budget during its Wednesday meeting, he noted in his letter that day. He said he received no responses to the Monday email and the city council adjourned its Wednesday meeting without budget changes.

“As the legal deadline for final decisions pertaining to next year’s budget is established by City Charter … as … (Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024), the City Council has effectively run out the clock on its own ability to cure these deficiencies, leaving administrative action as our only remaining option,” he wrote.

Jalali said the council’s working relationship with the mayor remains intact.

“The budget … is 99% agreements or acceptance of what council passed and responded to,” she said. “There are so many investments the mayor proposed that we wholeheartedly said yes to and will implement together. … We’ve passed a budget for our community going into next year.”