St. Paul to use fines to enforce some city laws after council’s charter amendment vote

St. Paul’s City Council Wednesday approved a charter amendment to allow the city to issue administrative citations.

The bureaucratic-sounding move could have major implications for the way St. Paul is able to enforce its local laws on issues such as wage theft, rent control and problematic landlords.

It’s a quirk of St. Paul that such an action needed to be considered. Most other large cities in Minnesota already have an administrative citations system to fine rulebreakers and give teeth to city ordinances. An administrative citation is similar to a parking ticket: a fine, but one that does not involve the criminal justice system.

Until now, criminal charges were the only penalty available to St. Paul to enforce its local laws, beyond sternly worded letters.

All seven council members backed the amendment, which was key because St. Paul requires a unanimous vote by the City Council to amend its charter.

“This is about the big guys,” Council President Mitra Jalali said last week. “This is about making them pay.”

Although she said she supports the amendment, Ward 1 Council Member Anika Bowie said she wants to be careful about unintended consequences of levying more fines, recalling boarded-up houses on her block growing up. She wants to make sure there are different outcomes for people who can’t afford to bring their homes back to code, for example, than for those who are unwilling to follow local ordinances. She added that she did not want the city to see fines as a solution to its revenue woes.

During public hearings and in letters this month, dozens of residents said they hoped fines would help the city make landlords take better care of rental properties and help officials enforce local wage theft and sick time laws.

“For all the work that City Council does creating rules and structures for a safe and healthy community, it’s a shame to have no mechanism to be sure we actually put them into practice,” wrote St. Paul resident Amy Gilbert. “Administrative citations provide the mechanism to make it work.”

“We all lose when our city is unable to protect working people from predatory employers,” said Wes Burdine, owner of the Black Hart of Saint Paul bar in Midway.

Other supporters included labor unions AFSCME Council 5, UNITE HERE Local 17 and the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation.

Some raised worries about how fines could hit low-income St. Paulites, but few voiced outright opposition to the measure over two weeks of public hearings.

Patricia Hartmann worried the administrative fine system would just add costs for the city and said she thought the court system should work for most issues. ”Just find yourself a good lawyer."

Hartmann added that she would gather signatures to overturn the charter amendment if passed.

Officials in the city’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity hope to use administrative fines to push employers to follow city laws for earned sick and safe time and crack down on wage theft.

Until now, such investigations could drag out for months or years, according to the department, with employers and their attorneys delaying city investigations by being slow to provide information and comply with city requests for meetings.

In one case, department officials said a complaint filed in July 2020, alleging 114 employees were owed more than $30,000 in back pay, went unresolved until late 2024.

Citations might also be used to enforce St. Paul’s rent stabilization ordinance. Landlords are not supposed to raise the rent more than 3% per year on apartments built before 2004. While Mayor Melvin Carter has proposed adjusting the ordinance, some landlords who own older buildings are already not abiding by the limits, city officials said.