Star Tribune
St. Paul mayor and city council meeting to reach budget compromise
The middle ground: a 7.2% increase.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Deputy Mayor Jamie Tincher said Carter, too, would like the levy to be lower. But proposing a 5% increase would mean an additional cut of $6 million from 2025 city services — a reduction that could increase fire response times, slow the processing of license applications and reduce parks and rec and library services.
“He doesn’t have a path to do that without reducing services that will be felt by the people who are currently getting them,” Tincher said.
If the two sides cannot agree on a tax levy for 2025, state law would require the city to institute this year’s levy. That, Tincher said, would lead to drastic cuts in city personnel and services, as costs go up every year because of things like health care, insurance and previously negotiated salary increases.
The gap between revenue and costs then, she said, would be $16 million.
Tincher was asked if this year’s negotiations felt “different.”
Star Tribune
What we know about UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing
While Minneapolis-based UCare remains open, its front doors were locked Friday morning.
“Of course Brian Thompson’s murder — and the ensuing vitriol on social media — sent shockwaves throughout our industry,” UCare said in a statement. “We have no reason to believe there is any danger specifically to our team. At the same time, there is a general feeling of vulnerability and concern.”
“It’s a wakeup call for a lot of companies,” said Glen Kucera, the New York-based president of Enhanced Protection Services, an arm of security company Allied Universal. “Unfortunately, it sometimes takes an event like this to impact change in the threat landscape.”
Star Tribune
Council on American-Islamic Relations must turn over donor list to Blaine Councilmember Lori Saroya
The country’s largest Muslim civil liberties group must hand over its donor list as part of a sweeping set of documents it must disclose in an ongoing federal defamation suit filed by a former senior leader-turned-suburban city councilmember.
Lori Saroya, now serving on the Blaine City Council, sued the national Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in January — two years after the group dropped its own defamation lawsuit against her. A subsequent CAIR press release prompted Saroya’s follow-up suit, and now appears to have exposed the organization to a vast list of information to furnish.
Late last month, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank ordered CAIR to turn over most of the discovery Saroya sought as part of her lawsuit. In his ruling, Frank described how a CAIR press release in which it claimed to have “proved” improper conduct by Saroya — despite having dismissed its case — “opened the door” to a deeper probe of its original case’s merits.
“Though CAIR objects to the broad discovery Saroya seeks, that breadth is a self-inflicted wound occasioned by its own press release,” Frank wrote. “In commenting on the merits of the 2021 lawsuit in the manner in which it did, CAIR resuscitated the very issues that had just been laid to rest.”
Zachary Alter, an attorney representing CAIR, had argued in a court memo that Saroya was trying “to blur the lines between the 2021 and current lawsuits” to obtain “documents that she hopes will substantiate the hundreds of allegations she has been making against CAIR for eight years and provide additional fodder for additional future statements.”
Frank was unmoved: CAIR’s position might be more persuasive, he responded, had CAIR’s press release merely outlined the procedural history and significance of the rulings in the 2021 litigation.
“Instead, CAIR stated that ‘[Saroya] was not able to defeat our lawsuit … [which] allowed us to prove her conduct,’ and that ‘we have already proven those facts,’”Frank pointed out. “A fair reading of the press release, particularly by a lay audience, would permit the reader to infer that Saroya had committed a crime, had defamed CAIR, had interfered with its business and breached her nondisclosure agreement.”
Jeff Robbins, an attorney representing Saroya, told the Star Tribune this week that Frank’s order “was extremely closely reasoned, meticulous and record-based.”
Star Tribune
Hermantown cracks down on ‘deplorable’ trailer park
He eventually found that about a dozen homes are in severe disrepair, but the worst of it, Holmes said, was one that had been without water for months after a line failed and flooded. A caving roof was held up by a two-by-four. Human waste was stored indoors. A porch had collapsed. The resident’s complaints to the owner and a maintenance worker had gone ignored, yet rent, which ranges from $800 to about $1,100, was still collected.
While Holmes worked with St. Louis County to find alternate housing for the resident, a disabled veteran, the man took his own life. Shortly before that, he had filed a lawsuit against the park owner. A 60-year-old who had served in the U.S. Army, he had been the first resident to allow Holmes in.
Hermantown’s complaint alleges several misdemeanor crimes, including failure to provide safe living structures and potable water and sewer connections to all units.
Corrective actions have been ordered by the city and the state, but the little work that has been done continues to be unpermitted and substandard, Holmes said, calling living conditions “deplorable” and the situation a “park-wide failure.”
Maintenance of manufactured homes can be difficult, he said, but he’s never seen anything so dire in his career.
“The last thing we want is to see people hurt or displaced, and we’re starting to run out of time,” Holmes said. “A lot of this is related to being provided with drinking water and bathing water, which they’ll lose most likely in these freezing conditions.”