To:  Saint Paul City Council

From:  Mitch Berg, mere taxpayer and member of the city’s Republican minority

Re:  Priorities

Ladies and Gentlemen:

A few days ago, on a Saint Paul Politics email discussion group, Council President Dave Thune wrote:

We have an assembly permit ordinance but our city attorney says it would be unconstitutional if challenged. I’d like to get that out of the way before we run into trouble with it. it was enacted to attempt to protect planned parenthood from demonstrators.

On Monday morning I had a brief, interesting conversation with Mr. Henderson of the City Attorney’s Civil Division.  He says it’s the City Attorney’s opinion that the city’s permit ordinance is fine, as-is. 

I also spoke with Chuck Samuelson of the ACLU-MN.  He didn’t know of any proposed changes (and goodness knows they’d be interested). 

I freely admit this could be a matter of my own confusion, but…Which ordinance were you referring to, Mr. Thune? 

And whom at the City Attorney’s office would be the go-to person on this issue?  I’d especially like to know, for as-close-to-the-record-as-I-can-get, why a measure that was hunky dory when applied to peaceful pro-life demonstrators is now in your own words
possibly “unconstitutional” and a matter of grave concern when all of the far-left council’s pals are coming to town.

Councilman Thune also wrote:

Our other committee is working on a “demonstrators guide to the galaxy”  not the real title but is sounds cool).  They will be figuring out how to get info out to non-delegates as to housing, communication, emergency services, etc.

So exactly who at the city is working on this?  How much city money is being spent to make protesters comfortable?  This, in a city that spent the entire legislative session bitching about how broke it was due to Aid to Local Government “cuts”? 

We have to look at a bunch of logistical things like – where buises or cars can
pick people up after marching, porta-potties, water, first aide, etc.

Is it normally the city’s job to provide transportation, sanitation, water and healthcare to protesters?  If the MCCL were to bring thousands of people to town to picket, say, a Planned Parenthood convention, how many porta-potties would the city put out for them?  Or, as I suspect, would they be told to arrange all of that for themselves, at their own expense?

Our position – supported by police is that demonstrators must be within sight
and sound of delegates. Shuffling folks away to a remote site is not an option.

Speaking of the police – could any of you comment about the friction in these organizing stages between Saint Paul (with its police department which, while, excellent, is politically beholden to the far-left City Council) and Ramsey County, whose sheriff, Bob Fletcher, is one of few quasi-Republican elected officials in the county?  It seems like the city is trying to inject itself into as much of the planning as possible, to try to insulate protesters from Sheriff Fletcher’s attention. 

Comment?

We hopefully have a large labor organization asking for the use of harriet island for the entire week. this would then become the “peace island” – rest
area, lost and found, communications, medics, connections for housing, evening entertainment and such. This may provoke a fight over a free speech group having the island instead of dignitaries or parties for media but it’ll be a good one.  I expect the council will have to override our permit process. if this is challenged by anyone we could have a charter crisis over whether the
council can unilaterally do it.

So the city – or actually, the far-left-of-center, labor-and-radical-beholden City Council which Councilman Thune leads – is willing to risk a constitutional crisis, and the attendant legal bills, to ensure that cronies of the City Council have full access to Harriet Island, one of the city’s premier park properties?

We don’t have a next meeting scheduled but I’m meeting with our council
research staff next week or so to start planning subsequent work sessions.
Included have been the lawyers guild, MCLU, electeds, police, parks, emergency
communications and others.  Any suggestions for things needing to be worked out are welcome.

Yeah, esteemed councilpeople, I have some suggestions.  How much money and effort is the city expending on “welcoming protesters”?  Who in the city’s government is leading this effort (whatever the effort is)?

It seems to the not-so-casual observer that…:

• The city is bending over further than backwards   to accomodate protesters.  Which, to an extent,  is fine; I am a demonstrably more-libertarian person than anyone you’re likely to know.  But…
• The city is also bending over backwards to avoid offending those among the protesters that are quite vocally planning, at the least, aggressive mischief.
• Finally – far from penning up the protesters, it’d seem that the city’s vision for the convention is to keep the delegates and party workers confined into a tiny corridor.  Not that that fazes me – I’ll be spending most of the week out among the “protesters”, documenting,  photographing, interviewing, filming…you know the drill.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your responses.  I’m sure they’ll be forthcoming.

Mitch Berg
The Midway

UPDATE:  Council President Thune has said that he was mistaken – the city attorney didn’t tell him the city’s Permit Ordinance needed to be changed. 

My other questions stand. 

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 5:45 am and is filed under Campaign '08, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.