Tag Archives: Saint Paul city question

Election 2026: St. Paul City Question 1

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There is a citywide referendum in St. Paul. This is the Right to Repair Initiative, which was placed on the ballot by petition. It was organized by the group Safe Homes St. Paul. It was at one point blocked from being on the ballot by the City Council on the grounds that the City Attorney doesn’t think it’s legal/enforceable, but this was overridden by a judge. Here’s the text on the ballot:

CITY QUESTION 1 (St. Paul)

Creating Chapter 34A of the Saint Paul Legislative Code

Should the City adopt the proposed Ordinance pertaining to a tenants right to repair? The ordinance would allow tenants to make repairs to their building after written notice to the landlord and deduct an amount not exceeding $500 or one-half month’s rent to pay for the repair. A “Yes” vote amends the City of Saint Paul’s Legislative Code to adopt the Proposed Ordinance pertaining to a tenant’s right to repair. A “No” vote will result in no changes to the City’s Legislative Code.

You can also find the full text of the proposed ordinance here.

On a fundamental level, I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that if you’re a tenant, and something breaks and your landlord doesn’t fix it, you should be able to just fix it yourself, or call a repair person and get it fixed, and deduct the expense from your rent. That feels entirely reasonable to me. Where I start to have concerns is in the details of how this would be implemented, exactly, and whether it would work the way I want it to work.

The initial concerns I had, along with the answers I got from Cole Hanson (of Safe Homes St. Paul) when I e-mailed:

1. What happens if a tenant tries to fix something, and breaks it worse?

Cole noted that Section 34A.05 says that all repairs must be made in a workmanlike manner, and if required by law, by persons who are licensed to perform the required work. He said that if you’re in doubt you should probably hire a professional. He also pointed out section 34A.07: “Nothing in this section shall abridge the liability of a contractor, servicer, vendor, or any other person who enters the premises to make repairs to the landlord for damage to property under the applicable principles of statutory and common law.” So — basically the answer is, if you’re a tenant doing the repair and you break it worse, you’re potentially on the hook for the cost of additional problems you might have caused.

2. What if landlords use this as an excuse to default on their responsibilities and tell tenants to fix stuff themselves? Repair is labor and for that matter so is scheduling a plumber. It shouldn’t be on tenants to repair things.

In Duluth, where this passed in 2025, the Right to Repair ordinance has apparently not yet been used. Per Cole, this is because the threat of tenants being able to call a repairman themself means that landlords are making repairs more promptly, because they absolutely want to be able to know it’s their own preferred plumber or whatever doing the work. St. Paul skeptics of this ordinance are less convinced that’s the case. I’ll note that there’s a Reddit thread in /r/Duluth looking for people who need help using the ordinance and the replies are mostly not people trying to figure out how to get something fixed.

3. How will it be handled if there’s a conflict between the landlord and the tenant about whether a problem is an actual problem that needs to be fixed, as opposed to something the tenant should just live with (or something the tenant is imagining?)

There’s an answer to this in the text of the ordinance! Section 34A.05, “Tenant contracting repairs; notice; eligible repairs,”(c) If the landlord disputes that a repair is required, they must send written notice to the tenant within 14 days of the tenant’s notice and arrange for the building official to inspect the property. If a landlord does not respond to the tenant’s notice within 14 days, the landlord waives their right to claim that a repair is not required. If the inspection confirms that the repair is required, or if an inspection does not occur within 30 days of the landlord’s written notice of dispute, the tenant retains the right to initiate the repair.“

4. Are there any protections for the tenant in situations where you call for what’s supposed to be a simple, under-the-limit repair, and then as the work is being done it balloons into something much more expensive?

Cole’s response: “What I see here is the classic leaky fixture actually caused by an old old pipe. In that case, a tenant would likely need to file again for the attached or other identified issues. This is why it would be worthwhile to use inclusive language when submitting notice to your landlord in case an issue is greater than anticipated. You can also file simultaneous requests for different violations, and possibly stack them month over month. Again, these are hypotheticals and have not been tested in court in Duluth, from which much of this language originated.” He also highlighted Section 34A.03: If the tenant’s rent is subsidized in whole or in part by a governmental agency, the deduction limitation of one month’s rent shall mean the fair market rent for the dwelling and not the rent that the tenant pays.

5. Is there any protection for the landlord against the following situation: a tenant has a broken doorknob, and after waiting out the 14 days, they hire their buddy Jo, who they then pay the full maximum amount allowed for 5 minutes of work, so their landlord winds up on the hook for $500 to Jo’s Expert Doorknob Repair?

I didn’t ask Cole this question but here’s my understanding: yes, the protection for the landlord is that they get two weeks to fix the doorknob themself. The ordinance requires that repairs be completed “in a workmanlike manner” and I don’t think that covers costs (however, I am not a lawyer.)

Other concerns I’ve heard:

1. The city enforcement infrastructure for this doesn’t exist, and won’t exist until sometime after this gets passed. Worth noting, in the case where a landlord disputes that a repair is needed, the landlord needs to arrange a visit from a building inspector. We do have those in St. Paul but I don’t know how many, and how busy they are. If the inspection does not occur within 30 days, the tenant gets to make the repair, even if the landlord has been trying to get someone to come out and take a look. That said, this has literally not come up at all in Duluth.

2. This could raise rent, because it raises the costs for landlords. I kinda think this is a bogus argument because landlords are supposed to fix stuff. This should already be part of what you’re paying for, even if you’re paying very low rent.

3. There are various additional legal issues with the way the ordinance was written. For example, if work requires a permit, the tenant can’t pull a permit, that still requires the landlord. The permit issue specifically got brought up by the City Attorney who wanted it knocked off the ballot, and it could, in a few cases, be an issue, but given the limits on costs you can charge back to your landlord, I think in general the stuff that requires a permit will still need the landlord’s participation anyway. Average rent in St. Paul is about $1500/month, which would cap costs at $750. Thinking back to the things we’ve done on our house that required a permit, all of them cost significantly more than that.

3. But because parts of the law are unenforceable (according to the City Attorney), the whole thing may just not go on the books until the City Council can revise it, and that won’t happen for a full year (because if something passes in a referendum the City isn’t allowed to tweak it for a year). The City Council could pass their own Right to Repair ordinance that would take effect much more quickly. This is a fair point, but I am concerned that if a Right to Repair ordinance fails, the interpretation will be, “our citizenry opposes this ordinance,” and not, “our citizenry would like us to immediately pass a version of this that has been vetted by our city attorney to cover problems like ‘what about permits that the tenant can’t get.'” It’s a shame that passage may mean it sits in limbo for a year, but I think passing it now makes it more likely that we get some version of it eventually.

Anyway, the upshot is this: there are absolutely issues with this ordinance as written, and I think that is one of the reasons that it has yet to be used in Duluth. (I think the theory by its proponents, that landlords don’t want their tenants hiring Jo’s Expert Doorknob Repair or going at things with a wrench themselves, is also a factor. I think there’s probably a final issue of lack of trust, that people are wary of assuming that if they hire their own plumber, and their landlord pushes back, and it all winds up in court, that this won’t leave them screwed.)

I’m going to vote for this because I do want some version of this to be the law, and I think we’re a lot more likely to get some version of this in the end if we pass it than if we don’t.

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.) I raised $7,230 during primary season so I’ve raised the goal.

I also have a new book out! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and I’ve been doing my best to keep Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven Books in signed copies.

Election 2024: Saint Paul City Question 2

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(I’m doing Question 2 first because it’s easier. I’m planning to do Question 1 next.)

St. Paul City Question 2 is about election scheduling. Here’s the question, which will appear on your ballot if you are a St. Paul resident. (Minneapolis residents don’t have this question on their ballot, although it’s been discussed as a thing they might want to do.)

City Question 2 (St. Paul)
Changing City Elections to Presidential Election years.

Shall Chapter 7 (Elections) of the City Charter be amended as follows: Sec. 7.01. – City elections. The election of city officers and such other officers as are required by law to be elected at a city election shall be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in odd numbered presidential election years. Notwithstanding Section 2.02 of this Charter setting four-year terms, and to transition to presidential election years, councilmembers elected on November 7, 2023, shall serve a five-year term and a mayoral election shall occur on November 4, 2025, for a three-year term. Currently, city elections take place in odd years. A “yes” vote changes City elections to take place in presidential election years, which occur in even years. A “no” vote keeps City elections in odd years.

The crossout is what get removed, the underlining is what gets added. This is pretty straightforward: right now, city elections are held in odd-numbered years (and the mayoral and city council races don’t line up, which is kind of annoying). The question is whether all the city races should be moved to Presidential years.

The rationale for this is very straightforward: turnout is generally pretty high in presidential years, much lower for off-year city elections, and lots of people will vote in the city races if they’re already standing there with a ballot.

The argument against making this change is that presidential races tend to suck up all the air in the room, and no one’s going to be paying attention to their mayoral or city council options if they’re busy being distracted by Trump or the next iteration thereof lying his ass off on TV.

ETA: the other major argument against making this change is that it’s not clear that St. Paul can both have its local elections in Presidential years, and use ranked-choice voting for local elections. State law requires “a single ballot card” in precincts using optical scan voting systems. There was a proposal to change this, the Local Options bill, which changed it to “a single ballot card, if possible,” but the Local Options bill did not pass.

The Minneapolis City Attorney analyzed this and found a number of obstacles to putting city elections into even years, one of which was the ranked choice problem. City politics guy Josh Martin has a thread of analysis here. And the fact that there is this long list of problems with this shift that just got completely handwaved by the people who put it on the ballot: super not reassuring. I am now a more emphatic NO vote. /end ETA

ETA 10/28: The group of local citizens who petitioned to put this on the ballot also have a website promoting their arguments. I will note that they kind of blithely claim that there would be no impediment to continuing ranked-choice voting because the City Code allowed for ranked-choice and non-ranked-choice votes to occur on the same card. (“Mixed-election method ballots. If elections are held in which ranked voting is used in addition to other methods of voting, the ranked voting and non-ranked voting election must be on the same ballot card if possible, with ranked voting and non-ranked voting portions clearly separated on the ballot card. If placement of all offices to be elected cannot be placed on a single ballot card, a separate ballot card may be used for those offices to be elected using ranked voting.”) Peter Butler, one of the petitioners, also sent a Letter to the Editor at the Star Tribune where he objects to a prior letter raising the ranked choice/presidential year/state law problem and says “The current city ballot is poorly designed for RCV: Candidates’ names are repeated multiple times and candidates for the same race appear on multiple rows (think Sudoku). The city can easily combine federal and city elections by using the latest electronic voting technology. The RCV ballot will have a cleaner, more compact format,” which ignores the fact that the exact section of St. Paul City Code his website cites actually specifies the format (“If a voting system is to be used, and the voting system can be programmed to do so, the ballot must include a number of columns equal to the number of candidates for mayor or council member, plus one (1), not to exceed a total number of six (6) columns. A number indicating the voter’s choice must be listed for each column, beginning with the voter’s first choice in the left-hand column, and continuing in order with the second and successive choices until all columns have been numbered.”)

I’ll note that Peter Butler has been featured on my blog before as a crank candidate. (End second ETA)

I am absolutely going to vote “no” on this because my strong personal preference is to spread out the work I do. It is a huge amount of work to research and write about as many races as I do, and I like having city races in the odd years. I also honestly think it’s good for the city to have elections where we are just discussing city issues.

I don’t think this is just a me problem: I think this would also be an issue for the League of Women Voters volunteers who moderate community forums, the spaces where those forums happen, the newspaper column inches available to discuss the election, etc. (But maybe not! Maybe none of this would be an issue! This is just a hunch based on how I feel about putting it all in one year.)

I do know that the reason I started doing this is that downticket races chronically get squeezed out and it’s hard for me to believe that this problem would not get worse if city races were happening in the same years as the national races.

I am not sure what the electoral ramifications would be, other than, I expect DFL endorsement would matter even more than it already does, because so many people would show up not knowing much about the city races, and DFLers will generally err on the side of voting for DFL-endorsed candidates if they don’t know anything else about the race.

Would it be good for the city or bad for the city? I have no idea. It would be bad for me, though, so. I’m going with “self interest” on my vote in this race.

ETA: The people who petitioned to put this on the ballot are not people I trust at all to have thought through how it would work (see above). I think it would in fact be bad for the city, in the sense that it would open a large can of worms created by a conflict in State Law and City Code. If we have tripartite DFL governance next year it’ll probably be quickly solved. If we don’t, it’ll be a big old mess that the Republicans will happily make worse because they hate blue cities. I don’t want that!

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people to donate to fundraisers I can then see fund. Usually I do teacher fundraisers (and I found one for this year, Ms. Pierce at Lucy Craft Laney school in North Minneapolis who would like donations to buy snacks for her students and supplies like Lysol wipes — stuff that schools with wealthier families just have the parents send in).

But I’m also fundraising for something slightly more personal to my family this year: YMCA Camp Northern Lights. Camp Northern Lights is a family camp, which is a camp that whole families attend together. My family went to Camp Du Nord (the other YMCA family camp) for many years, and my daughter Kiera has worked as a counselor at Camp Northern Lights for the last two summers. One of the things that makes Camp Northern Lights unique is their serious commitment to inclusion of families from communities that have been underrepresented at YMCA camps.

Last summer, Camp Northern Lights had a serious fire early in the summer — no one was hurt, but they lost their commercial kitchen and the housing for the counselors-in-training. They are hoping to raise enough money to rebuild an expanded kitchen. I have set up a fundraiser towards that goal. If you’d like to express your appreciation for the usefulness of this blog, you can show your love by donating to my fundraiser!

Elections 2023: Saint Paul City Question 1 (the Sales Tax question)

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Saint Paul ballots will include the following question:

CITY QUESTION 1 (St. Paul)

1.0% SALES TAX FOR IMPROVEMENTS TO STREETS, BRIDGES, AND PARKS

Should the City of Saint Paul establish a one percent (1%) sales and use tax over the next 20 years to generate $738,000,000 to repair and improve streets and bridges, $246,000,000 to improve parks and recreation facilities, and associated bonding costs? A vote YES means repairs and improvements to streets, bridges, parks, and recreation facilities would be funded through a new one percent (1%) sales and use tax. A vote NO means repairs and improvements to streets, bridges, parks, and recreation facilities would not be funded through a new one percent (1%) sales and use tax.

You can vote yes, or no.

I’m going to vote yes, but I’ll admit I’m doing it kind of grudgingly, despite being a Democrat who is generally happy to pay more money for better services.

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Minneapolis and Saint Paul City Council Elections, 2023

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Welcome to election season, and, as always, apologies to the people who followed me for my science fiction rather than my election blog (I feel less bad about inflicting science fiction on the people who follow me for election blogging).

Minneapolis and Saint Paul both have City Council races. Saint Paul also has a School Board At-Large race with four open seats.

In Minneapolis, there’s a race in every ward except Ward 2 — Robin Wonsley is running unopposed. There are open seats in Ward 7 and Ward 12. (Which is to say, the current incumbent is not running again.)

In St. Paul, there’s a race in every single ward and wards 1, 3, 5, and 7 are open seats.

Does it feel like we just did this? If you live in Minneapolis, you had a city election just two years ago. But we had a census in 2020, followed by redistricting, and Minneapolis has the “Kahn rule” saying that the city needs to hold new elections once redistricting is completed. Back in 2020, Minneapolis had a City Question that proposed a second two-year term for City Council reps, if necessary, to keep the Mayoral and City Council races synchronized. It passed by a wide margin. So the Minneapolis races are all for a two-year term.

If you live in St. Paul and it feels like we just did this, well, we last had City Council races in 2019, you’re just suffering from the “what even is time?” problem where March of 2020 lasted for 847 days. Or else you’re remembering that we had a mayoral race in 2021. Our City Council and mayoral races have been out of sync either forever or for a good long time. The St. Paul candidates are all running for a four-year term.

Saint Paul also has a City Question regarding the implementation of a 1% sales tax to fund repairs to streets and parks. I don’t think Minneapolis has any City Questions this year.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, I’m going to start by pointing my readers at this new Art teacher at Jenny Lind elementary who needs to stock her classroom with supplies.

Election 2021: The Rent Control Questions (Minneapolis and Saint Paul)

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Rent control / rent stabilization is on the ballot in both cities this fall. In Minneapolis, they’re seeking permission to write a rent control ordinance. In St. Paul, there’s a specific proposal.

In Minneapolis, it’s City Question 3 and reads as follows:

CITY QUESTION 3 (Minneapolis)

Authorizing City Council to Enact Rent Control Ordinance

Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to authorize the City Council to regulate rents on private residential property in the City of Minneapolis, with the general nature of the amendments being indicated in the explanatory note below, which is made a part of this ballot?

Explanatory Note:
This amendment would:
1. Authorize the City Council to regulate rents on private residential property in the City of Minneapolis by ordinance.
2. Provide that an ordinance regulating rents on private residential property could be enacted in two different and independent ways:
a. The City Council may enact the ordinance.
b. The City Council may refer the ordinance as a ballot question to be decided by the voters for approval at an election. If more than half of the votes cast on the ballot question are in favor of its adoption, the ordinance would take effect 30 days after the election, or at such other time as provided in the ordinance.

In Saint Paul, it’s City Question 1 (it’s the only city question on the ballot) and reads as follows:

CITY QUESTION 1 (St. Paul)

Whether To Adopt a Residential Rent Stabilization Ordinance

Should the City adopt the proposed Ordinance limiting rent increases? The Ordinance limits residential rent increases to no more than 3% in a 12-month period, regardless of whether there is a change of occupancy. The Ordinance also directs the City to create a process for landlords to request an exception to the 3% limit based on the right to a reasonable return on investment. A “yes” vote is a vote in favor of limiting rent increases. A “no” vote is a vote against limiting rent increases.

tl;dr — I would vote yes in Minneapolis, but I’m going to vote no in St. Paul.

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