Members of the St. Paul City Council exchanged strong words before deadlocking 3-3 on a failed vote to suspend procedure and introduce an amended “separation ordinance” that would prevent St. Paul Police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Council members had discussed strengthening the city’s longstanding separation ordinance Wednesday morning during a meeting of the council’s policy committee, where Molly Coleman, the sole council member with a law degree, has been taking the lead on beefing up the ordinance.
On paper, the city has barred city employees, including police, from enforcing federal immigration policy since 2004, but St. Paul police still showed up during a federal immigration enforcement action on Rose Avenue on Nov. 25, where they used chemical munitions as they clashed with protesters.
At the end of Wednesday’s regularly scheduled afternoon meeting, Council Member Anika Bowie asked for the opportunity to introduce a draft version of the revised separation ordinance, which would set in motion a public hearing a week later and a final council vote possibly by the end of the month.
Objections
Calling the last-minute submission legally dubious, half the city council objected, noting there was nothing printed before them or available online for public review.
“It is on the council member who is bringing the motion to take responsibility for printing out the copies and making sure the copies are available online,” said Council President Rebecca Noecker, noting the language requires review by the city attorney. “We might have those next week, but at the moment, we don’t.”
Bowie objected at length.
“I’ve always deferred to your leadership, Council President Noecker, but in this moment I’m very ashamed,” said Bowie, who later posted her objections to social media. “This is a time to speak up for our immigrant communities. … I can’t go back to them and say ‘hey, I didn’t have it printed’ or ‘the city attorney didn’t get to it.’ The city attorney can see all over what our residents are up against.”
Noecker, Coleman and Saura Jost then voted against suspending the rules to introduce Bowie’s proposal for further consideration. Bowie, Nelsie Yang and Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim voted to support Bowie’s motion. Cheniqua Johnson is on leave following the birth of her child. The motion, which required four votes to pass, failed.
How it unfolded
The impasse unfolded at the end of the afternoon council meeting, after Noecker thanked a handful of childcare workers in the audience who had arrived to express concern about Immigration and Customs Enforcement action around their daycares. She said she had joined Kim and Yang in speaking with them before the council meeting to help schedule a sit-down with the police chief and the mayor’s office later in the week.
Noecker then asked if any council members had additional announcements from their wards. Bowie said she would ask the council to vote to suspend the rules and introduce a strengthened and amended separation ordinance for its first reading.
Noecker and city staff then noted the proposal had not been uploaded to the city’s online meeting agenda, which is delivered through Legistar software, for public perusal. For an ordinance to be submitted under a suspension of the rules, the city attorney’s office needs to review the wording, as well, said a representative of the city attorney’s office at the table.
“Ms. Bowie, is there anything in Legistar?” Noecker said. “Our rules require that we have a copy of it before us, which we don’t have. … I recognize there is a lot of urgency about this.”
Bowie said she had shared copies of the ordinance amendment with council members by email.
“To my knowledge, the draft of the ordinance has been given to all of us,” Bowie said. “We’ve reviewed it. We gave feedback to it. That language is already written. … I guess I’ll look to our staff to print out the copy if we need to physically look at it.”
“I think this is extremely unfortunate that we are not taking some level of action because we don’t have printed copies while people are literally getting kidnapped and terrorized on our streets,” she added later. “Right now we are going to end this council meeting doing nothing to protect our residents.”
Disgreements
Coleman, who said she had been working closely with Yang and Kim on a revised ordinance since early December, said she would vote against Bowie’s motion to suspend the rules “because I have such a deep urgency and a deep need to get this right. … We have to follow our procedure. We have to ensure that we are not opening ourselves up to additional legal liability that will prevent us from doing the work of protecting our residents.”
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“The last time I looked at this ordinance, it was not in completed form,” Coleman added. “What I’ve seen from city staff … is people working around the clock to get this done.”
Yang disagreed.
“Everyone here, we want process, we want structure, but there are moments when we need to unleash ourselves from that,” Yang said. “We have childcare providers here in City Hall today because they need direction from us, they need us to even be giving out written information about what our police officers are going to be doing.”
