Copyright Star Tribune
Next week, voters in St. Paul will have the chance to add a common-sense tool to the city’s toolbox in the form of “administrative citations.” Right now, due to a quirk in our city charter, St. Paul is one of the only cities in the country that can only enforce its basic rules and laws using criminal charges, versus much more reasonable civil fines or administrative citations. In practice, this means the city’s current enforcement tools tend to be either far too brutal or far too gentle. Let’s look at some recent examples. While most of St. Paul’s landlords and building owners do their best to serve their tenants, there are unfortunately always going to be some problem properties managed by absentee landlords. The most visible recent example has been Madison Equities, which, up until very recently, owned essentially half of downtown. When their complete disregard for the Alliance Bank Center led the building to be too dangerous to occupy, tenants were forced to abandon the building on short notice with almost no recourse. This is because Madison Equities knew the gap in the city’s enforcement processes and completely disregarded its responsibilities to keep the building in working order. While well-meaning landlords and building owners regularly comply with local rules and orders, bad actors know that one of the only ways the city can truly force building owners to comply is through criminal charges or by revoking the building’s “Certificate of Occupancy” (C of O). But both the city and the bad actors know that revoking a C of O means kicking the small business or family renting the space out on the street — something bad actor landlords like Madison Equities know the city doesn’t want to do. So they simply ignore orders to do basic upkeep on their buildings and bleed their tenants for every penny they can, knowing the city’s hands are tied. This challenge isn’t just downtown. It exists across the city in every one of our neighborhoods. When families reach out for help because they’re being mistreated by their landlord or because their home is in truly terrible condition, many times the city is forced between revoking a C of O and forcing a vulnerable family out of their home, or hoping and praying a landlord will comply with an order. When CVS closes in Midway, the city’s hands are tied once again. CVS is still locked into its lease, so the building owner is getting the revenue it needs and has no motivation to take action. And CVS itself has no motivation to invest in maintaining or securing the building because to CVS, it’s simply an added cost. Administrative citations will give the city the ability to more proactively assess fair and carefully crafted fines directly to the source of these problem properties. They were passed by a unanimous 7-0 vote by the City Council earlier this year. They are supported by every major candidate for mayor in this fall’s election and by the city’s charter commission. They are supported by numerous labor unions, faith groups and the vast majority of our city, county and state officials. St. Paul voters, when you vote Nov. 4, vote yes on City Question 1 to allow the city to use this common-sense tool.
