Minneapolis City Council passes carbon emission fees for 2025, overrides Mayor Frey's veto
The Minneapolis City Council overturned Mayor Jacob Frey's veto of the City's 2025 license fee schedule , which will charge the city's biggest polluters fees based on their carbon dioxide emissions.
On Thursday, the Minneapolis City Council overturned Frey's veto of implementing fees on carbon dioxide emissions on a 9 to 2 vote, a decision a spokesperson on the mayor's staff calls "performative."
"Following the veto, the Council immediately had to clean up the mess that they made. They quickly changed what they voted on, pushed back the effective date of the fee, and acknowledged that the fee they had set would have to change," the spokesperson said. "We all agree on attaching fees to pollution. Our only ask was to do it the right way, and the Council is now scrambling to make that happen."
Council Member Robin Wonsley, the lead author of the fee, said expanding the city's existing Pollution Control Annual Registration (PCAR) fee program would charge the largest polluters $452 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions. Wonsley says the plan would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6% in 2025 at no cost to taxpayers.
Despite the council adopting the expansion on Oct. 2, Frey vetoed their decision on Oct. 9 , saying that a new fee cannot legally be implemented by Jan. 31 of this year and that it would likely constitute an unauthorized tax due to state law saying cities may only implement fees to recoup their costs of existing fees, which it is not.
In an email to the council on Oct. 9, Frey wrote: "Once again, we find ourselves in a needless state of limbo because the majority of the City Council refused to listen to expert staff. And once again, a short-term political win was favored over actually getting work done."
Minneapolis city attorneys say the fee can only be legal by closely tailoring the program and fee amount so that the fee solely collects the "city's regulatory costs related to processing the registration fees, inspecting covered facilities, and administering any regulatory program specific to those facilities."
"That program, including acquisition of additional personnel, does not exist at present," city attorneys added. "The order of operations is important because program development necessarily informs the fee amount, so the fee should not be established until the program is fully conceived."
Frey says despite personally supporting the concept of holding carbon emission producers accountable, a program must be created, businesses and stakeholders must be consulted, and staff needs to be hired before the fee is implemented.
"I am all on board for PCAR fees—but it's time the Council stops playing games and follows the processes in place to enact lasting change," said Mayor Jacob Frey. "Council must work with City experts to pass a fee in a way that is legal, feasible, and smart. Otherwise, their efforts are useless and may actually hinder our ability to mitigate pollution."
Following the veto override, Council Members Wonsley, Chavez, and Vice President Chughtai motioned to amend the 2025 fee schedule, changing the implementation date to July 1, 2025.
"Climate change is an emergency. The recent devastating hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida have claimed hundreds of lives, reminding us all of the life-threatening consequences," Wonsley said.
"Since 2021, Minneapolis residents have organized to demand that the Council pass a fee on carbon emissions, a major contributor to climate change. I'm proud that the Council took action to help remove about 605 tons of carbon emissions from the atmosphere next year alone and that the big polluters will cover the cost of the program, not working-class residents."
To address Frey's concerns about the legislation, the Council announced that it would advance legislation with an implementation date matching the fee schedule in the upcoming weeks.
Council members also said they were able to secure a commitment from the health department to develop the program so it is ready for implementation before July 1, 2025.
While these changes give the proposed fee a better legal basis, a mayor's spokesperson criticizes the councils' decision to override Frey's veto instead of going through the proper channels.
"Instead of overriding the veto, they could have just gone ahead with a new legislative directive. First, you create the program, hire staff, then do the fee study before implementing the fee, but they put the cart before the horse here," the spokesperson said.
"That makes it so performative because why do everything that he asked and then override it?"
The council did approve a legislative directive for the administration to complete a study of carbon fees by May 1 so that the rate could be updated before the fee's implementation, if necessary.
"The City Council is committed to taking every action needed to make sure we can start this work immediately," Council President Elliott Payne said.
"The devastating impacts of climate change are already being felt by our communities, and they will not stop for process or bureaucracy, so we must match the urgency of our actions with the urgency of the problem, which is why we could not wait until 2026 to start this work."
