New St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her has created a toxic work environment at City Hall, prompting her police chief Axtel Henry to file an official complaint with HR and a civil lawsuit. Apparently the mayor couldn’t keep her hands off the chief during their weekly celebrations of Weiner Wednesday. It’s all documented in this comically redacted report from Resolute Law Firm on behalf of the city. We’ll call Resolute Law Firm #1. Law Firm #2 was authorized by the city council to defend Mayor Her in her civil lawsuit with the police chief. Law Firm #3 is what got the attention of the Golden Turkey Committee.
The city council wasn’t sure if they could hire Law Firm #2, so they hired Law Firm #3 to advise them on this question!
While the committee doesn’t normally care about matters of the heart, the spending by the St. Paul City Council to hire lawyers to advise them on the hiring of other lawyers earned them a 2026 Golden Turkey Award nomination for silly spending.
It all started when police chief Axtel Henry filed a sexual harassment complaint against Mayor Her. The city launched an investigation and concluded some inappropriate stuff happened, but nothing illegal. The investigation was done by Law Firm #1, Resolute Law, and cost city taxpayers $44,000.
We here at the committee don’t want to distract from the labyrinthine spending in this nomination, so we won’t go into detail about the complaints. We won’t discuss how Mayer Her sent sexual, personalized memes about eating hot dogs on Weiner Wednesday, how she redecorated the police department by taping her own headshot and some photoshopped wrestling photographs on top of official officer portraits, and how she allegedly made ‘sexual grunts’ while working out. According to her, she was just trying to fit in, okay? Not the point here.
Unsatisfied with the report’s conclusion that being weird in this way didn’t legally count as sexual harassment, and the mayor’s dismissive response, Chief Henry took his complaints to district court through a civil lawsuit. We won’t distract from the threepeat law firm hiring by mentioning that this time Chief Henry added more details, like that Mayor Her had made innuendos about the size of his penis, kept touching his upper thigh at budget meetings, and, what’s more, arranged a Saturday night bar meeting where she (unsuccessfully) tried to order alcoholic drinks for him, confessed her marriage struggles, and (unsuccessfully) offered to drive him home.
That promoted the city council to hire Law Firm #2, Fisher Phillips, to defend Mayor Her and the city at $500 per hour. Those bills are mounting up as we speak. It was the city council’s next move that caught the eye of the Golden Turkey Committee. At the request of the city attorney, the city council hired Law Firm #3, Green Espel, to “to serve as special counsel to the City of Saint Paul to conduct the independent determination of indemnity and defense.” In non-lawyer talk, they want to know if they have to pay for Law Firm #2 in defending the mayor. So they hired Law Firm #3 at $325 an hour to tell them whether or not they have to pay for Law Firm #2. Huh?
Never have the words of William Jennings Bryan been truer when he declared, “If it weren’t for the lawyers we wouldn’t need them.”
Keep in mind, the police chief and the mayor now have to communicate through a mediator, which is also costly. Is this the government of the second largest city in Minnesota, or a middle school cafeteria?
According to MPR, City Council President Rebecca Noecker said she “would rather be spending money on literally anything else right now.” We can’t blame her; the city is facing a $26 million deficit, after all. With this attitude, we expect Councilmember Noecker to cast her vote for her own city council in this year’s Golden Turkey contest for silly spending.
Voting is now open! Vote here.