When the U.S. Department of Justice took a hard look in 2015 at the municipal fines and fees issued by Ferguson, Mo., officials uncovered some difficult truths. Nearly a fourth of the city budget rested on fining individuals, many of them local residents and the vast majority of them Black. Ferguson, a high-poverty community, issued some 90,000 summonses and citations in a single year. The city’s population at the time was 21,000 people.

As the St. Paul City Council prepares to vote on amending the city charter to allow for non-criminal fines and administrative citations, Ferguson looms large as a negative precedent for some critics worried that future penalties will come down hardest on those with the least ability to pay.

They’re eager to see guardrails preventing cash-strapped city departments from balancing their books through fines over mundane concerns like tall weeds and chipped paint.

“What is going to happen to poor folks and BIPOC folks if they get caught up in one of these fines?” said Caty Royce, a co-director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association, addressing the council last Wednesday. “If we’re going to pass this — and it sounds like a lot of folks are in support of it — it has to have a tool, whether it’s a fund that’s put together that (supports) folks that cannot afford this, or some safety measures. … There are equity issues.”

Amendment looks likely to be approved

Years in the making and supported by all seven council members, the proposed charter amendment looks likely to be approved by the city council on Wednesday, but that may not be the final word.

Peter Butler, a former council candidate and frequent critic of City Hall, said he and likeminded peers plan to collect 2,000 voter signatures with the intent of freezing the charter amendment and forcing it onto the public ballot next November. He’ll have 60 days from the time of the council vote to get his signatures in.

“You’re overselling this idea of civil penalties,” Butler told the council Wednesday. “The idea that these civil penalties are going to inspire changes in behavior, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Council Member Anika Bowie said her childhood home had been temporarily boarded by the city in her youth for falling below code. With those memories in mind, she had listened to all sides of the debate and reached out to the nonprofit Fines and Fees Justice Center, which is based in New York City, to consider “a process that treats people with dignity, justice and protection.”

Rather than vote against a charter amendment, she said she planned to propose a resolution to support an advisory group — a “community equity body” — to review how citations are structured, and to use the city’s new Reparations Commission to incorporate fines and fees into a historical analysis of city practices with negative racial impacts, dubbed a “harm report.” She also proposes a fund “ensuring that fines and fees can’t be used as a city revenue generator” and are instead collected to help everyday residents comply with city standards.

Administrative fines have “unintended consequences,” acknowledged Bowie, noting community leaders in the wards she represents — Frogtown and Summit-University — are opposed to them. “Those unintended consequences are real. It’s been well studied. We’ve seen them across the country. … As someone raised in Rondo, I have seen the devastation when someone didn’t have the means to meet our city’s codes,” she said, referring to the historically Black St. Paul community.

Worker, renter groups urge approval

In all, 24 of the 25 largest cities in Minnesota — including Minneapolis, Woodbury and Brooklyn Center — allow their city councils to impose non-criminal fines on those who violate city ordinances. St. Paul does not, though that will change if the charter is amended and the council is granted the power to begin altering individual ordinances to add administrative penalties.

During a public hearing before the city council last week, a long line of city residents and representatives of worker and renter advocacy groups took the microphone to encourage the seven council members to do just that. Administrative citations have won the support of ISAIAH, the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa, Sustain St. Paul and Unidos St. Paul, all of whom urged the council members on Wednesday to vote for the charter change.

“Private contractors working on our streets just block them off, set up obstructions, and the city has very little power to stop them,” said Rick Varco, a political director with SEIU Healthcare and chair of the St. Paul Charter Commission. “It’s a real problem. … This is a real solution. In fact, it’s the solution most cities have.”

Testifiers also shared stories of menacing or absentee landlords who failed to maintain properties, and self-serving employers who ignored city regulations around paid sick leave. Several speakers recounted how out-of-state property owners take advantage of them and their friends or family. The likelihood of hiring an attorney to take on a sizable corporation over a few hundred dollars in pay or services seemed unrealistic.

Tonette Clardy, a small-business owner who is active in the faith-based organization ISAIAH, told the city council that she and her neighbors have long expressed frustration about a vacant property in the area recently condemned.

“Currently, there are too many examples where the city of St. Paul is left with two options,” Clardy said. “It’s either inaction, or charging someone with a (criminal) misdemeanor. These are too extreme to address the situation in my neighborhood. I don’t want the owner to be jailed, but I do want him to be held accountable. I also don’t want the violators of laws, especially those of color, to be on a path toward over-penalization or criminalization.”

Still, some neighborhood advocates remain skeptical that granting the council citation power will work out as planned. Jens Werner, executive director of the Summit-University Planning Council, said the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections and its complaint-based summary abatement orders already penalize homeowners in the lower-income Rondo area more so than in neighboring Cathedral Hill, which is wealthier.

Patricia Hartmann, an attorney and former council candidate, predicted critics will collect enough voter signatures to take the charter amendment to the November ballot.

“You’re just going to add a big burden to the people of this city to pay for a whole lot more city jobs, to try to duplicate a court system … that has really good rules of evidence and doesn’t allow hearsay,” Hartmann said. “Just get yourself a good lawyer. … This should be done by a popular vote.”

Council members are on board

To amend the charter, the seven-member council must be unanimous. All of the council members last Wednesday spoke in favor of an amendment, noting each ordinance change creating administrative penalties would have to go through its own individual hearing process.

City Council President Mitra Jalali said the intent was “to go after the worst actors” and “some of the biggest, most faceless, out-of-state corporate landlords and employers who will not even show face to a public hearing. … This is about the big guys. This is about making them pay.”

Jalali said civil penalties would go through an “ability to pay” review ensuring institutions pay larger fines than everyday residents and “the fines were proportionate to the actor.”

“What we heard today is just so many examples of why residents in our city — especially and disproportionately lower-income, working class people of color — need the city on their side to defend their paycheck, to defend their home, to make sure the habitability and safety of their residents are taken care of,” she added. “And with that, we need to make an equity plan for implementation.”