No one has yet taken up Bloomington and Minneapolis on new protest-permission processes that the cities recently created to bring order to anticipated free-for-alls for demonstration spaces during the Republican National Convention. With the RNC just a month away, Bloomington has received no applications for its new public assembly permit, and Minneapolis hasn’t had anyone register for first dibs to protest on a city sidewalk or crosswalk during the convention.

In May, the Bloomington City Council passed a new public-assembly ordinance owing to concerns about potential RNC-related protests. Many delegates and media members will be staying in Bloomington during the convention. The city has roughly 7,800 hotel rooms, more than Minneapolis and St. Paul combined — not to mention the world-famous Mall of America.

Originally, the city proposed requiring that any gathering of more than 25 people for a common purpose apply for a permit and pay an $80 fee. But after constitutional concerns were raised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ordinance was scaled back so that it only applies to gatherings of 50 or more people and the fee was reduced to $15.

But according to Doug Junker, a license examiner with the City of Bloomington, the new public-assembly permit process has not attracted any applicants so far. “Right now, it seems like everyone wants to protest [at] the [St. Paul RNC] site,” he says. “There’s still time I guess.”

Similarly, Minneapolis can’t give away the free registrations it’s offering for priority to demonstrate on city sidewalks and crosswalks. After an arduous task-force process and prolonged city council debate, Minneapolis adopted a temporary ordinance applying only from Aug. 25 to Sept. 8—in contrast to Bloomington’s ordinance, which is a permanent addition to that city’s code.

Its authors termed it a voluntary registration: In return for providing Minneapolis government with information on a planned protest, a group gets unprecedented, city-sanctioned first dibs on its preferred location, including for the first time the right to block a sidewalk or crosswalk.

Opponents such as City Council Member Cam Gordon deemed it an unnecessary and unwieldy restriction of free speech rights. Gordon’s aide Robin Garwood took a we-told-you-so tack to news that no registrations have yet been received.

At the semi-autonomous Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, Shane Stenzel issues permits for events in parks. He said he gets calls every day from people interested in holding RNC-related events on parkland in Minneapolis and has taken several applications but has yet to issue a permit.

In part that’s due to a hold on both public and private spaces that was included in the St. Paul-Minneapolis bid to attract the convention in the first place: The Republican National Committee has until Aug. 1 to tell the park board whether it wants to reserve parks within a two-mile radius of downtown Minneapolis. A few annual events, such as the Labor Day picnic U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (DFL-Minn.) hosts at Boom Island Park, got to keep their bookings despite the RNC hold.

Stenzel expects next week will see a free-for-all of demands for permits as those spaces become more widely available. He confirmed, as MPRB Superintendent Jon Gurban told Fox 9, after a MnIndy report on steep increases in tent permit fees, that the RNC had yet to book the top-tier $10,000 permit.

The fair city of St. Paul is proving to be the hostess-with-the-mostest when it comes to issuing permits to protest the Republican National Convention, as MnIndy reported last month. According to the city’s parks and recreation department, 22 park permits have been issued for events surrounding the RNC. St. Paul also leads in the number and ferocity of ensuing squabbles over the details and conditions of the permits it has issued.

The main conflict has been the lawsuit by the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War over the route and other aspects of what’s expected to be the convention’s biggest demonstration on Sept. 1. Now other groups are complaining about the city’s terms on protest permits that they hold or which the city has denied, the Pioneer Press reports today.

Photos: Flickr