The 2025 Minneapolis mayoral candidates attacked incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to veto the 2025 budget passed by the council Tuesday.
Frey vetoed the around $1.9 billion budget on Wednesday night, over concerns the city council was acting fiscally irresponsible. Frey appears to be the first Minneapolis Mayor to ever veto a budget. In a 9-4 vote Thursday, the council voted to override that veto.
In a statement released Wednesday, Council Member Emily Koski (Ward 11), one of four candidates to announce a mayoral run, said the council worked hard to lower Frey’s proposed property tax levy increase from 8.1% to 6.8%.
“We made tough choices and cut spending where we could — choices that the Mayor initially rejected and rebuffed,” Koski said in the statement. “We worked to reprioritize current spending to address your needs.”
The budget adopted by the council included over 70 amendments, all of which were passed with residents’ priorities in mind, Koski said in the statement.
“I am disappointed and disheartened to hear the rhetoric and narrative being used against this work, specifically the characterization of amendments that reprioritized spending to meet residents’ needs, your needs as pet projects,” Koski said in the statement. “These aren’t pet projects these are your top priorities.”
Rev. DeWayne Davis, who announced his candidacy in October, denounced Frey’s veto in a post on X.
“We can’t veto our way to better Minneapolis,” Davis said in the post.
Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) called Frey’s veto “dangerous and harmful” to residents of the city in a post made on X.
“Minneapolis is full of people that are working hard to move our city forward, but with every veto, Mayor Frey sets us backward,” Fateh said in a statement.
The budget adopted by the council included crucial public safety services, support for small businesses and services for housing and homelessness, Fateh said in the post.
“These are exactly the kind of services that we need to make Minneapolis the vibrant and loving city that we know it can be,” Fateh said in the post.
In an interview with the Minnesota Daily, mayoral candidate and former City Council candidate Brenda Short criticized Frey’s veto as “disrespectful to the community.”
Frey’s veto is proof the city needs a change in its leadership, Short said.
“The community is a victim of Mayor Frey,” Short said. “We’re the victims and I don’t want to be a victim anymore.”
