St. Paul police overtime spending worries City Council

Years of overspent police overtime budgets amid St. Paul’s climbing property taxes have City Council members worried.

The council has been waiting for reports on the police department’s use of overtime, which members say they have not received.

Council members say they want a better handle on how the police department uses overtime, how the department accounts for that expense, and when overtime is used — whether it’s used more for emergencies, event security or normal operations.

“We had significant overspending, multimillion-dollar overspending last year that we still need to understand,” Council Member Cheniqua Johnson said during a meeting last week.

A spokesperson for the police department told the Star Tribune that the requested information has been provided to the mayor’s office. The Star Tribune has requested the information.

Council members say they want to analyze overtime use to make better budgets.

“We see overtime as a symptom,” Council Member Anika Bowie said, of too many job vacancies, and too many burdens placed on the St. Paul police.

Bowie said she wants to better understand how and why St. Paul police use overtime, not just how much overtime is used and what it costs, which could help make better policy.

After a showdown with Mayor Melvin Carter over the 2025 budget, the council is trying to be more proactive about the city budget process, rather than act as an up-or-down vote on a budget prepared by city administration.

Police overtime was a major sticking point last year, after the council heard from dozens of residents worried about their property taxes.

Cuts to the police overtime budget were part of the council’s path to passing a budget with a smaller property tax levy increase than Carter had proposed.

But the move led to open conflict in City Hall.

Carter publicly lambasted the council, challenging the members to create a more detailed plan for the police department to cut back on costly overtime. Carter then attempted to use last-second line item vetoes to restore the overtime budget, by shifting funds from a planned renovation of City Council offices.

The council ultimately overrode the vetoes and passed a smaller property tax increase than Carter wanted, cutting $1.2 million from the police overtime request to get there.

The budget also set aside $700,000 for police overtime, but that money is supposed to only be accessible to police if the department made regular reports about overtime.

Almost halfway through the year, those reports have not come, Council President Rebecca Noecker said.

“It’s frustrating to have to ask for info over and over again,” Noecker said in a recent interview.

The City Council is preparing a formal request to the police department about overtime use, saying more casual approaches have been ignored.

Noecker said the council is trying to understand if the police department is accounting for overtime by shifting funds, paying for it with savings from vacant jobs.

“Which isn’t good accounting,” Noecker said.

But the larger issue, she said, is that the council is supposed to set the budget, but does not have good information about this unpredictable piece of the puzzle.

“We didn’t have a good handle on how much overtime spending was occurring how far out of budget it was taking us,” Noecker said. “We can’t make informed decisions without that information.”

Bowie said she hoped the discussion would be good for St. Paul police in the long term.

“The conversation that council is having is not the what but more so the why, what’s actually the root cause,” Bowie said in an interview Monday. “If we aren’t forward-thinking around solutions to recruit more officers, to hire more staff in our city, we are going to keep having this issue.”