Finding a Green Way to Govern

On Friday, June 6th, the Minneapolis City Council will vote on a resolution which could significantly change the way people assemble and protest on City of Minneapolis sidewalks. I am organizing a press conference with CM Gary Schiff urging the Mayor and Council to not take these potentially drastic steps to curtail our civil liberties. The press conference is tentatively set for Tuesday , June 3rd at 12:30 in the City Hall rotunda (350 South Fifth Street). While many things about Ostrow's proposed resolution are fine, I have serious concerns about the following particular aspects that would: 1. Require any person or group planning on holding a public assembly of greater than 50 persons “in a location and in a manner” that will prevent others from using sidewalks to provide notice and obtain plan approval, if they wish to “obtain priority” over other groups. 2. Allow City staff to determine whether an unregistered public assembly prevents other pedestrians from using sidewalks, pr...

Here is some more information on three issues under consideration in City Hall that I want you all to be aware of: 1. Free Speech and the RNC I continue to oppose the “notice and plan approval” process for “public assemblies,” being brought forward by Council Members Ostrow and Remington. I believe that most protest groups will not participate in a process that says they must provide notice, and I fear that lack of plan approval will become a pretext for unnecessary conflicts between groups and counterproductive involvement of law enforcement during this summer’s Republican National Convention and beyond. My concern only grew larger last week when it became clear that the intention was make a permanent policy change rather than just something for use during the convention as the original name of the resolution indicated. My concerns include the fact that there is also no way for a person or group to appeal a decision if their plan not approved. Additionally if one group has a plan a...

The Human Resources Department has brought forward a proposal to the Executive Committee last Wednesday to conduct pre-employment drug testing for all City employees. I was the only committee member to oppose this idea (Mayor Rybak and Council Members Benson, Johnson, and Lilligren voted yes). I have many reasons for opposing this policy. Most importantly, I was unconvinced by the claims made by Human Resources staff for the necessity of this policy. They gave four reasons for adopting this policy: 1) to ensure employees are drug and alcohol free at the time of testing and prior to a final offer of employment being made; 2) to safeguard employees and citizens against the potential risks associated with employees who are chemically dependent; 3) To ensure continued compliance with state and federal laws; and 4) To protect City resources by further reducing the liability associated with negligent hiring cases. However, they were unable to cite any specific example of a liability case ass...

Next Wednesday, May 21, there will be a public hearing on an ordinance change I have had on my priority list for a long time: repealing the Lurking ordinance. Unfortunately, in order to build a Council majority of seven votes, I also have to move to make changes to the Loitering ordinance. You can see these two questions here. The changes will make it so that Loitering covers some of the crimes currently dealt with by Lurking - specifically, anything involving stealing or vandalism. To be clear, I don't support the Loitering ordinance. I have many of the same problems with Loitering that I have with Lurking: it criminalizes intent and is used predominantly against the poor, persons experiencing homelessness, and people of color. However, I have heard from advocates for the poor and anti-homelessness crusaders that Lurking does more damage than Loitering, for the following reasons: - Lurking looks worse on arrest records. I hear that potential employers and landlords can countenance...

I was deeply disappointed to read today that Governor Tim Pawlenty has vetoed a bill that would phase out Bisphenol-A and certain phthalates. I sponsored a resolution in support of this bill earlier this year. The Governor cites "lack of scientific evidence" as a reason for this veto, which is much more likely driven by chemical industry lobbying efforts. Pawlenty is using the wrong standard, a philosophical template that treats chemicals as if they were persons accused of a crime. In this model, chemicals are "innocent" until proven "guilty" of causing harm to human health or the environment. The problem is that the diseases caused by these chemicals are rarely directly attributable to a single, provable exposure. For instance, animal studies have shown that phthalates elevate risk of certain cancers. Due to obvious ethical constraints, similar studies in humans have not been conducted. It is logical to assume that phthalates have caused cancer in humans...

I'll be rooting for Mayor RT Rybak Monday morning, when he takes on Ramsey County Commissioner Toni Carter and Star Tribune blogger Jim "Roadguy" Foti in a race we're calling the Great Commuter Challenge. RT will be on his bike, Toni on foot and on transit, and Jim in his car. The trio will start out in Merriam Park in St. Paul, do exactly the same small errands, and try to end up at the Central Library in Minneapolis between 7:50 and 8:00am. Listen in on the nail-biting action on Jazz 88, and join us for the celebration at about 8am. Go RT!

Congratulations to the University of Minnesota for winning the 2007 TMO Commuter Choice Award for Outstanding Promotion by a large organization. The U is being honored for its successful implementation of a transit and transportation response plan after the I-35W bridge collapse. The Council is hosting a reception before our May 16th Council Meeting to honor the U and Minneapolis’ other winners from 9-9:30am in room 319 of Minneapolis City Hall, across the hall from the Council chambers. We will also be passing an honorary resolution from the City at the beginning of the Council meeting immediately following the reception. The University did a great job reducing their single-occupancy auto trips into campus after the collapse. I'm hoping we can continue to work together to keep these reductions in place as the new bridge opens.

CM Ostrow’s latest public assembly permit proposal is now posted and will be considered at the Public Safety and Regulatory Services Committee meeting this Wednesday, May 7 sometime after 1 PM. Please see the committee agenda for more details. This proposal still appears to include a mandatory permit for “any person or group planning on holding a public assembly of greater than 50 persons in a location that will prevent other pedestrians from using the sidewalks and crosswalks must provide notice of the assembly to City staff and obtain plan approval.”

With the help of Shawn Lewis from the African American Men's Project who has been working hard to educate me and others in City Hall about the racial disparities in Minneapolis, I have come to recognize this as a critical area where Minneapolis is failing. To get some idea of the problem look at some of the data gathered by Dr. Rosa A. Smith’s in “Black Male Students: Minnesota’s Litmus Test and Opportunity for Public Education" that was presented last year at a meeting of the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership . Today, in response to this data and Shawn's urging, the City’s Economic Development staff presented a report on the employment and poverty gaps between white and minority residents to the Health, Energy and Environment committee. The report reveals many good efforts to address poverty and unemployment in Minneapolis, as well as very disturbing racial disparities. For example, we learned that roughly 11% of white people in Minneapolis live in poverty comp...

KSTP aired an interesting " investigative news " piece earlier this week about bicyclists breaking the law. To subject yourself to it, go here . Unfortunately, they didn't get the basic facts right. The worst factual inaccuracy in the piece is the assertion credited to “police in both St. Paul and Minneapolis” that “about half the time,” accidents between bicyclists and drivers are caused by bicyclists failure to yield. This is just not the case. I've looked through the 2006 bike/car crash data collected by the City of Minneapolis, and found that 120 of the 200 crashes (or 60% ) for which fault can be determined were caused by drivers, while only 80 (or 40% ) were caused by cyclists. This is far from close to “about half.” Rather, it is a clear indication that driver error and violation of law is a significantly greater threat to bicyclist safety than bicyclist error and violation of law. I have asked KSTP to correct this misstatement of fact on the air, but I'm n...