St. Paul mayor vetoes $1.8 million in council chamber renovations to boost police overtime funds

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter has issued a series of rare line-item vetoes to the city budget approved last week by the city council, canceling nearly $2 million in spending that had been set aside to remodel city council offices.

Carter’s goal, instead, is to use that and additional savings to preserve funding for the St. Paul Police Department, which faced cuts to overtime spending, and fund a director-level position for the city’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity.

The council, in anticipation of a budget veto, had already scheduled a special meeting for 4 p.m. Thursday, with the goal of voting on a likely veto override. It’s unclear, however, if the seven-member council still retains that legal authority.

Carter’s 11th-hour veto was issued Wednesday afternoon, which the mayor described in a five-page letter to the council as the last possible day that the members could finalize the 2025 budget. The city charter requires final council action on the budget “not later than 12 days” before the state records the city’s new tax levy. The Minnesota Department of Revenue has said all final levy numbers are due to the state by Dec. 30.

“Upon completion of a standard review of your adopted 2025 budget, staff in our City’s Office of Financial Services have identified significant issues, principally including the use of $2,396,503 in unattainable savings to finance core city operations,” wrote the mayor, in his letter.

“As the legal deadline for final decisions pertaining to next year’s budget is established by City Charter … 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,” Carter added.

Planned cuts restored, but hiring and spending freeze looms

The budget approved by the council last week holds the next property tax levy to 5.9%, less than the 7.9% increase the mayor proposed in August.

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

The mayor’s office, in a statement issued Thursday, noted that the primary drivers of overtime expenses are “essential and required tasks, such as back-filling patrol shifts for officers away on military or medical leave, pursuing time-sensitive investigations, and testifying in criminal trials.”

Carter wrote in his letter: “As these are essential and required services, this reduction cannot be realized as actual savings.”

Other line-item vetoes

In addition to vetoing $1.8 million in planned spending to renovate the council chambers, the mayor issued three additional line-item vetoes of new proposed spending, with the goal of adding back funding for a new director for the Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity, which has been run for years by deputy staffers.

The council, in the budget approved last week, had dropping funding for the long-vacant position, a director-level role the mayor noted is required by the city’s Home Rule charter. Council members noted the city has not begun the hiring process for that job, but the mayor emphasized that under the charter, it’s the council’s obligation to commence it.

Carter said he has directed city department leaders to prepare to freeze new hiring and “contracted expenses across every city function,” including any new spending planned for 2025, “which will likely remain in effect until final determination has been made on a full set of service reductions necessary to meet the bottom lines in the City Council’s adopted budget.”

Carter said he shared alarm “about the squeeze residential property taxpayers are feeling between rising residential values and decreasing values for apartment and office buildings,” he wrote. “We cannot cut our way out of these cycles; the fact that this challenge is not unique to our city only underscores our urgent need to invest. This same concern drives my conviction that right now is a poor time to disinvest in public safety, downtown revitalization, and public infrastructure.”

This is the third time Carter has issued a veto in his seven years as mayor.