Gov. Tim Walz went to St. Paul’s Como Lake Wednesday to get a close-up view of the damage that copper wire thieves have caused to 100 light poles, darkening the path around the popular destination.

“Our teams come and replace them and replace them and replace them,” St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter told him about fixing the wire. “We’ve seen these stripped out literally the next day.”

“From the very same one?,” Walz asked.

“From the very same one,” Carter answered.

Walz and Carter visited Como Regional Park to highlight what they say is a need for legislation to curb copper wire theft.

The legislation would require anyone selling copper metal to have a state-issued license. Construction contractors, people who work in residential trades, and other licensed workers would continue to be allowed to sell copper and wouldn’t need a separate license. The bills would still allow residents and businesses to recycle copper materials with scrap metal companies for free.

St. Paul spent $1.2 million last year on repairs and replacement due to wire theft from street lights and traffic signals, and the problem has been growing. The cost was about $250,000 in 2019, according to the city.

Copper wire theft “may seem like a fairly innocent thing,” Walz said as he addressed the media Wednesday. “If you think about it, it is not only incredibly costly and time consuming for the city, it’s also incredibly dangerous. We light our cities so that we make sure that these beautiful places are safe.”

The danger was evident on Christmas Eve when a driver fatally struck Steven Wirtz, a 64-year-old retired Marine, as he walked his dog across a St. Paul street in his North End neighborhood that was pitch black due to copper wire theft.

Concerns from scrap metal industry

Sen. Sandy Pappas and Rep. Athena Hollins, both DFL-St. Paul, are sponsoring the bills. With about a month left in the legislative session, Walz said Wednesday, “This is a top priority” and he encouraged legislators to move the bills forward.

Jeremy Estenson, representing the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, said at a Senate committee hearing last week that the problem with theft used to be catalytic converters, it’s now copper wire and “it will be aluminum. … It will be something else.”

There’s a need “to do something more comprehensive and meaningful as opposed to this whack a mole strategy where we might try to tackle or license whatever commodity happens to be the most popular to steal at that time, probably driven by market prices,” Estenson said.

The industry’s main concern, Estenson added, is “this will only license people who do things legally to start with. … Criminals generally don’t go get their paperwork in order before a night out on the town with their Sawzall and their tools stealing copper.”

Furthermore, scrap metal recyclers believe a side effect of requiring a $250 license for sellers will be “a cooling effect on recycling because there are people who just do a little bit of recycling” and might throw it in the garbage instead of seeking out a license that costs more than what they’d earn from recycling, Estenson.

Estenson said they’d like to continue talking about the price of the license or allowing a small amount of wire to be recycled without a license.

Why officials say licenses are needed

The problem extends beyond St. Paul — 38 mayors signed onto a letter supporting the legislation.

State law already requires scrap metal dealers to collect information from a seller’s driver’s license or identification and the license plate of the vehicle they arrived in.

Requiring a license to sell copper wire would help police because they can’t trace where copper brought to scrap yards is coming from, said St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry. Though St. Paul labels its wires with “City of St. Paul,” people strip it off, so there’s not another easy way to identify it as stolen.

Someone selling stolen wire could just tell a scrap metal recycler, “It’s mine.’ … And (police) can’t prove where it came from,” Henry said.

People have been charged in cases when they’re caught in the act of stealing wire, and police and St. Paul officials encourage anyone who sees suspicious activity around light poles to call 911.

Related Articles

Jacob Wetterling Resource Center director honored with national award

Court says private vehicle is ‘public place’ under Minnesota gun law

25 years after Nathan Edberg’s truck was found abandoned in Vadnais Heights, search for answers continues

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty campaigned on change. Some say she’s gone too far.

What ever happened to Twin Cities’ ‘Fishing Hat’ bank robber and his victims? Filmmaker takes deep look

By STEPHEN GROVES and LISA MASCARO (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson, facing a choice between potentially losing his job and advancing aid for Ukraine, forged ahead Wednesday toward a vote later this week on a package of funding that also includes Israel and Taiwan.

After agonizing over how to proceed on the package for days, the Republican speaker texted GOP lawmakers that he will start a days-long push to hold votes on three funding packages for Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Indo-Pacific, as well as a several other foreign policy proposals in a fourth bill.

Johnson said he was proposing that some of the aid for Kyiv be structured as loans, along with greater oversight, but the decision to support Ukraine at all has angered populist conservatives in the House and given new energy to a threat to remove him from the speaker’s office.

“By posting text of these bills as soon as they are completed, we will ensure time for a robust amendment process,” Johnson wrote in his message, which was shared by two Republican lawmakers.

The votes on the package are expected Saturday evening, Johnson said. But he faces a treacherous path to get there.

The speaker will almost certainly need Democratic support on the procedural maneuvers to advance his complex plan of holding separate votes on each of the aid packages.

It was not clear whether Democrats would assist Johnson. They were still awaiting the details of the legislation and have become increasingly impatient with his deliberations.

Democrats have demanded that the foreign aid bill hew closely to a $95 billion foreign aid package that the Senate passed in February. That legislation would fund the U.S. allies, as well as provide humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the threat to oust Johnson from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, gained support this week. One other Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he was joining Greene and called for Johnson to resign. Other GOP lawmakers have openly complained about Johnson’s leadership.

“You are seriously out of step with Republicans by continuing to pass bills dependent on Democrats,” Greene wrote on the social platform X. “Everyone sees through this.”

In an effort to satisfy conservatives, Johnson said he would hold a separate vote on a border security package that contains most of a bill that was already passed by House Republicans last year. That bill has already been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and conservatives quickly denounced the plan to hold a separate vote on it as insufficient. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called the strategy a “complete failure.”

The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus posted on X that Johnson had was “surrendering the last opportunity we have to combat the border crisis.”

As part of the foreign aid push, Johnson also said House members would have an opportunity to vote on a raft of foreign policy proposals, including allowing the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets, placing sanctions on Iran, Russia and China, and potentially banning the video app TikTok if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake.

The precarious effort to pass the foreign aid comes as lawmakers who are focused on national security warn that the House must act after waiting for nearly two months for Johnson to bring up the foreign aid.

In the House Intelligence Committee, the Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Turner, and top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes, issued a joint statement Tuesday saying that they had been informed in a classified briefing that it was important to provide funding for Ukraine this week.

“The United States must stand against Putin’s war of aggression now as Ukraine’s situation on the ground is critical,” the lawmakers said in a statement.

Still, there was a growing acknowledgement in the House that Johnson could soon be out of the speaker’s office.

“This is a chance to do the right thing,” Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said this week. “If you pay for it, you’ll be known in history as the man who did the right thing even though it cost him a job.”