Minneapolis Mayor Frey poised to block council again as his veto use continues to climb
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If it seems to you that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is particularly prone to use his veto authority, you’re not wrong.
So far this year, the mayor has vetoed five actions and has vowed to nix a sixth action passed by the council Thursday. When that happens, he will have vetoed 16 actions since he first took office in 2018. That’s more vetoes than the previous two mayors combined.
The uptick in vetoes sheds light on a changing dynamic influencing the policymaking — and thus the residents — in the state’s most populous city.
A changing dynamic
In 2023, a local news channel interviewed Frey about the new city council majority whose politics leaned farther left than his.
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“Look, if I have to use my veto pen, I’ve got it right here in my pocket,” he said in an interview recently re-posted by WedgeLIVE. “But that’s not the way you start out a term. You start out a term saying ‘let’s work together.’”
A lot has happened since then. The first veto came in February, opposing the council’s wording of a Gaza ceasefire resolution, then really picked up pace in the past couple months — with one in October, two in November, and now, early in December, another on the way.
Frey’s disagreements with the council have at times appeared to be based on partisan politics, even though all Minneapolis’ elected officials fall ideologically along the liberal side of the political spectrum. The council majority, however, does lean more left than the mayor.
Frey, who served one term as a council member before becoming the mayor, casts them as a group prone to working performatively and quickly, often without care to expertise; other council members cast Frey and his administration as a barrier to bold and crucial progressive change who needs to be held accountable.
Still, the majority of actions passed do go forward without disagreement, slipping by quietly and without as much notice.
“For each mayor, they have to come to their own understanding of the power of the veto,” said City Clerk Casey Carl, who has had a seat at the table with the mayor and council since 2010.
He’s been there since R.T. Rybak, who averaged one veto per year in his 12-year tenure. And was there with Frey’s predecessor Betsy Hodges, who didn’t issue any vetoes during her one term.
Carl adds that Frey has overseen councils with three different council presidents and high turnover.
“And that, to me, is more a reflection of what drives the veto, [it’s] the sort of philosophical differences and political differences of opinion between the mayor and the makeup of the majority of council,” Carl said.
The power relationship between the council and the mayor has also changed during Frey’s tenure. In 2021, voters approved a change in the city’s charter which vested more executive power in the mayor and delegated legislative authority to the council.
Cam Gordon, who served on the council from 2006 to 2022 as a member of the Green Party, says divisions now seem “played up, maybe even bigger than they have before.” He partially blames that government structure change to a “strong mayor” system for souring relations at city hall.
Under the new structure, the council no longer has an executive committee, which was made up of members of the council and the mayor. That committee used to have oversight over department heads. Now, that oversight authority lies exclusively with the mayor.
Gordon, who has been critical of the strong mayor system then and now, said the system has fostered mistrust from some council members, who don’t have full confidence in department heads to be independent from the mayor.
“They’re worried the mayor has had some conversation with them and their job is on the line if they cross anything that the mayor wants,” Gordon said, adding that he understood that skepticism. “And then you have the mayor squawking about, ‘why don’t you have any confidence in our professional staff when they come in and tell you what to do or not to do?’”
‘They don’t want to take the time to do their homework’
Frey says some of the items landing on his desk just haven’t met the mark. He points to the 53 ordinances that have been introduced through October of this year, which is just about the total introduced in 2022 and 2023 combined.
“The council wants to act so fast that they don’t want to take the time to do their homework, to abide by the law and to listen to expertise,” he said. “There’s been this gravitational pull to the extreme.”
When asked, Frey didn’t name specific left-leaning policies or beliefs that he viewed as ideologically extreme. Of the veto letters this year, only one — the carbon fees clash — cited legal concerns. However, Frey accused some council members of ignoring data, and of prioritizing ideology and messaging over good, practical governance.
Frey points to his veto of the council’s second rideshare driver pay ordinance earlier this year, after Uber and Lyft threatened to pull services from the city, in which the council didn’t heed his request to wait for a Department of Labor and Industry report before passing the ordinance.
“We have to have not just the courage to move forward to see progress, but also have the guts to tell our own side — at times — what they don’t want to hear,” Frey said. “Defunding the police as a slogan or as an action was a bad idea from the get go, and I’ll tell you, it did not tickle when I told a group of a couple thousand people that came to my home that I wasn’t going to do it, but it was the right thing to do.”
‘We move with a sense of urgency and purpose’
Council President Elliott Payne rejects the notion that council members aren’t doing their due diligence. They’re doing their homework, he said, and have invested in building out their policy and research team to support that work in a data-driven way.
“What is really clear about our approach to governing is that we are clear about our values, and we’re pursuing those values through legislative action,” Payne said. “We move with a sense of urgency and we move with a sense of purpose.”
He said this council is about taking firm leadership stances to address pressing issues, from combating climate change to ensuring the city is affordable for everyone — even when those actions won’t be welcomed by all. That’s the type of stance that got many of them elected, Payne argued, and as representatives who work closely with the constituents in their wards, better represent the will of the people.
Payne pointed to progressive moves that are viewed popularly now, even though they made people uncomfortable at the time — like the Behavioral Crisis Response team and the Minneapolis 2040 plan.
Payne sees some of the mayor’s vetoes as shying away from that type of firm stand.
“The easier thing to do is to not take firm positions on things so that you don’t lose support,” he said. “Sometimes taking that action creates challenges for some of the various voters and bases and interests in our city — and I think the mayor is constantly stuck trying to triangulate those things.”
Some of those interests, Payne noted, were clear in the saga that played out with the Labor Standards Board. That board aimed to bring together workers, business reps and stakeholders to pitch policy ideas to the council. Frey vetoed the proposal calling it unfair, seeking more business at the table and an equal number of mayor and council appointments. Some business owners raised concerns about the board, fearing more regulations and costs.
But Payne said the board would have no policymaking or enforcement authority, and does welcome business voices, while workers have historically been on the short end of an imbalanced power dynamic.
“If you put it through a narrative lens that makes it sound scary, all of a sudden it does turn into something that the business community can’t support,” he said. “And once the business community can’t support it, and you want to hold on to their support for your political purposes, it puts you in a really tough situation.”
That’s something former council member Gordon has noted among some of the actions vetoed, too — including an affordable housing preservation ordinance.
The ordinance would have allowed vetted organizations, with a commitment to maintaining affordable housing and protecting tenants from eviction, to make the first offer when certain units go up for sale. That action aimed, in part, to combat a trend of out-of-state investors driving up the price of affordable housing in Minneapolis.
“All of those were an effort on the part of the council to somehow better regulate or reign in private economic interests, if you will,” Gordon said, adding that the vetoes have made it easier to paint the Mayor as “pro-big business or investor.”
In the case of the affordable housing preservation ordinance, the mayor vetoed it because of a difference in “policy perspective,” saying though he agreed with its goals, he believed it would hurt investment and raise taxes. He said he spoke with several potential purchasers who opposed it or were concerned about its impact.
More veto conflicts to come
As the next election cycle approaches, the sometimes contentious dynamic has only seemed to grow more pronounced — and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by those seeking to unseat Frey. Two contenders, Ward 11 Council member Emily Koski and State Senator Omar Fateh, have both pitched themselves as collaborative foils to Frey, eager to bring unity to City Hall.
“We need a strong, unifying leader,” Koski declared, officially announcing her run Wednesday.
“I’ll work with the progressive city council to achieve real wins,” Fateh promised, as he announced his own two days prior.
Another stamp of disapproval on a council’s move is on its way.
The same day the council missed overriding the Labor Standard Board by one vote, a narrow majority passed a resolution urging the University of Minnesota to ease discipline against student anti-war protestors who occupied Morrill Hall in October.
A spokesperson for the mayor said that veto can be expected early next week, raising Frey’s total vetoes to 16.
