Photo: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

A battle royale within Minneapolis government escalated Friday when the park board’s lawyer, acting on behalf of a citizens’ group, filed a lawsuit against the City of Minneapolis.

The suit asks a judge to force the city council to allow a referendum on the November ballot that, if passed, would give the park board new tax-levying autonomy.

Attorney Brian Rice took his case to Hennepin County District Court (pdf) only hours after the city council voted 11–2 not to put the proposed city charter amendment before voters at the upcoming city election.

That vote was despite sufficient petition signatures submitted by the Citizens for Independent Parks Committee — subject to the council’s review of the proposed ballot language.

Most city council members voted in accord with a city attorney opinion (pdf) that said the petition language overreaches, in essence birthing a new local body of government as only the state Legislature can do.

Only Council Members Sandy Colvin-Roy and Cam Gordon dissented. Gordon said the threat of constitutional challenge shouldn’t be enough to knock a question off the ballot.

Council President Barbara Johnson traced the disharmony within city government to a failed effort begun early this year to put a different referendum question on the fall general election ballot: Should the park board lose its quasi-independence and be absorbed into city government as a department under the city council and mayor?

That effort, by council members Paul Ostrow, Ralph Remington and Don Samuels wasn’t the origin of all tensions between the council and the park board. But it set off a series of moves in a kind of civic chess match over who sets taxes in the city. A charter amendment to abolish the Board of Estimate and Taxation, an intermediary in taxation skirmishes between the city council and park board, will appear on the ballot in November.

“I really regret that this Pandora’s box was opened. The threat to the independence of the park board has produced a seesaw [of reaction],” Council President Johnson said at the meeting Friday.

Johnson’s colleagues gave voice to some of the malevolence released from the Pandora’s box.

“This debate may be injuring our ability to work together,” said Council Member Robert Lillegren of the council-park board tiff. He decried a lack of “transparency and accountability” on data about where the park board spends money.

“I’ve been requesting this for years,” Lillegren said. “Sometime I feel like I’m trying to get Col. Sanders’ secret formula or the recipe for Coca Cola. … It’s simple data.”

Council Member Lisa Goodman said a petition-signature gatherer had told her that “the [Columbia] golf course would be made into condos by the City of Minneapolis” without the park referendum. Rhetoric suggesting council members don’t understand parks “is very insulting,” Goodman said.

Council Member Ralph Remington used the occasion to decry, in general, “lowest common denominator politics” built on deceptive slogans such as “save our parks” or even “save the children.” Ballot referendum issues are “insider baseball,” Remington said, so for most voters, “They hear the slogan and they sign their name.”

In an interview with the Minnesota Independent after the vote, Citizens for Independent Parks campaign manager Justin Fay called such remarks an “unfortunate” use of council members’ “bully pulpit.”

He saw no role for “personal grudges with the park board or individual members of the park board” in the council’s legal evaluation of the proposed amendment.

Rice, also interviewed after the vote, said a negative court ruling or failure of the effort at the polls might lead to seeking new legislation at the state Capitol. Rice is providing free legal services to the referendum campaign, as is University of Minnesota School of Law Professor Fred Morrison. Rice also serves as attorney and lobbyist for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.

The first hearing in the case is Thursday at 1 p.m., a rushed date since ballot questions must be set by Sept. 11.

Rainville was appointed to the post (then known as “alderman”) in 1975 and spent 22 years on the council, including a decade as its leader. The family’s political legacy has continued in the ensuing years: Her daughter, Barbara Johnson, is the current City Council president. Her nephew, Michael Rainville, is running for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post referenced Rainville’s political legacy in a column last year. Here’s the Strib’s obituary. The flag at City Hall has been lowered to half-staff, and a moment of silence will be observed in her honor prior to the start of the City Council meeting Friday.

“These are among the most challenging economic times that our nation has faced in its history,” Rybak said in a statement announcing the recommendation. “Every sector of the economy is feeling the impact of this financial crisis, and certainly government is not immune.”

The move comes as the city wrestles with the likelihood of serious budget problems owing to the tanking economy. According to the city’s finance staff, Minneapolis already faces a roughly $38 million shortfall in employee pension funds owing to stock market losses.

The piece also mentions that among those preceding Johnson in the president’s seat was her mother, Alice Rainville. Dionne quotes Johnson as seeing in Clinton’s treatment more ageism than sexism. Johnson didn’t have to worry about either in her last election: The council president, who’s occasionally said to harbor other ambitions, ran unopposed.