Agenda - Council Work Session - 01/14/2014

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If the county levies a tax within the area of the watershed, the taxpayers of the same area may have to pay the bill. However, if the county pays for the project, the cities will not have to raise funds through city ad valorem taxes or utility charges. 4. WEIGHTED VOTING 434997v1 LW105 -1 A. Background. Most of the changes of substance proposed by Ramsey relate to the proposal to use weighted voting for capital projects. Under the proposal, the votes of members would be weighted in accordance with each member's annual contribution, and the vote, so weighted, would have to exceed 66% for a capital project. B. Legality of Weighted Voting. There is no general prohibition against weighted voting in joint powers organizations. However, it may not be legally authorized in this case. Minn. Stat. § 103B.211, subd. 1(c) imposes certain restrictions on how voting can be limited in the JPA of a joint powers WMO. It provides "decisions by a joint power board may not require more than a majority vote, except a decision on a capital improvement project, which may require no more than a two- thirds vote." It may be argued that the language proposed by Ramsey does not require more than a two- thirds vote since the weighted voting is only required to have 66% of the votes. However, it seems to me that is likely that this is not consistent with purpose of the law quoted above, which I assume to be that the legislature did not want to allow joint powers organizations to make it too difficult to undertake capital proj ects. Once Coon Rapids is out of the LRRWMO, there will only be three members left. If Ramsey and Andover or Ramsey and Anoka voted for a project, the project would be approved under both the existing JPA and the amendment proposed by Ramsey. However, if Anoka and Andover voted for a project, the representatives for two - thirds of the cities would have voted for it, and two- thirds of the board members would have voted for it, but this would not suffice under the weighted voting proposal. In this case, only unanimous consent would result in approval of a capital project. I doubt that the legislature intended that JPAs could be written, or amended, to avoid the two- thirds vote limitation and require unanimous approval of a capital project by the simple expedient of using weighted voting. Shortly after Ramsey proposed the amendment for weighted voting, I received a call from Jim Haertel of BWSR who expressed concern about whether weighted voting would be permissible. As of the date of this memo, I have not been advised whether BWSR has made a formal decision in this question. However, because the JPA amendment will have to be approved by BWSR, I would recommend that the question be posed to BWSR whether the weighted voting proposed by Ramsey would be a legally acceptable amendment to the JPA. C. Policy Considerations and Observations. If the weighted voting proposal is determined not to be lawful, consideration of that proposal would end there. Page 3