ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ”

ST. LOUIS — The region’s latest attempt at government reform wound down this week after a panel tasked with reviewing the city’s charter voted to recommend only modest changes in the face of opposition from Comptroller Darlene Green and Mayor Tishaura O. Jones to more sweeping proposals.

And because of a last-minute legal interpretation from Jones’ law department, even those proposals won’t be submitted directly to the people, as aldermen and city voters intended them to be when they approved the creation of the commission last year. Aldermen could decline to take up the recommendations and Jones could veto them.

“I’m disappointed,” said Annie Rice, the former alderwoman who sponsored the bill creating a once-a-decade review of the city’s charter by a commission that was supposed to send its proposals directly to voters.

“I would hate to see the board or mayor’s office hold up any recommendations just because they don’t like the political consequences,” Rice said.

St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Megan Green did signal Tuesday, however, that aldermen would introduce board bills to get the panel’s recommendations on the November ballot. The board will introduce bills Friday and scheduled a committee hearing July 23 to put its own touch on the language before voting on them.

While the Board of Aldermen has always had the power to send charter amendments to city voters, Green said the board would form a special committee to “explore” further changes to the charter and continue the commission’s work after the body dissolves at the end of August.

City voters last year approved creation of the Charter Commission to meet once a decade and propose changes to the city’s 110-year-old governing document. The commission has spent much of the last year reviewing the charter and coming up with proposals to submit to voters.

A lawsuit last year challenged whether that violated a state constitutional provision that says aldermen must submit charter changes. And in May, the city’s legal department surprised some observers when it said the law creating the commission did in fact require the proposals be submitted to aldermen.

Regardless, some of the commission’s recommendations would still be considerable changes to the city’s political environment, if they make it past aldermen and the mayor and are adopted by voters.

On a narrow 5-4 vote Monday, the commission sent a proposal to move city elections from March and April in odd years to August and November in even years to match the electoral calendar for national and state elections, when turnout is far higher. It would also subject all citywide offices except circuit attorney to the city’s new nonpartisan election rules with a runoff vote between the top two vote-winners.

The mayor supported moving elections later in the calendar year but said the elections should be kept in odd-numbered years. The commission also sent that recommendation onto the board even though its chief proponent, commissioner Scott Intagliata, said research was clear that more people would participate during high-turnout even years.

“I do think that a number of folks in politics are concerned that they are going to have to work a little harder in (even year) cycles to raise money,” he said during the meeting Monday. “To me, that is a very easy tradeoff.”

The commission also recommended a proposal giving the Board of Aldermen more authority over the budget. Currently, the board can only decrease line items proposed by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the city’s unique three-member panel made up of the mayor, comptroller and aldermanic president. The charter amendment would allow aldermen to also propose increases or new line items in the budget.

“This process is very common for most municipalities,” said commissioner Chris Grant, who pushed it. “And I think it restores some power to our local elected officials.”

It also sent along changes consolidating several city offices into a new department of transportation, despite opposition from St. Louis Streets Director Betherny Williams. And it recommended updating antiquated charter language using male pronouns, the only other change Jones said she supported.

The commission’s other proposal would create a new elected official known as the “public advocate,” which would essentially serve as a city auditor. The new office would also oversee oversight boards for the police and jails. Those boards have complained they face roadblocks from a city administration trying to protect itself from litigation. Commissioner Jazzmine Nolan-Echols put forth a competing proposal, which failed, that would have made the office a mayoral appointment.

“I don’t understand why we would put forth a proposal in which we do not have the support of the mayor or the public,” she said.

‘Shipwrecked on the shoals of racial division’

But left out of the discussion were the board’s more sweeping proposals to give the mayor’s office more power to make appointments and control city finances. While Americans are often suspicious of centralizing power, some political scientists argue it would allow the chief executive to get more done and actually increase accountability.

“This government is hamstrung by an overly complex set of checks and balances that make it unwieldy,” said Todd Swanstrom, a professor of public policy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “Former mayors endorsed charter revisions because they know it’s a weak form of government and they can’t get anything done. They also get blamed for underperforming city government even though they don’t control large portions of city government.”

The most controversial proposal was to eliminate the city’s Board of E&A and the elected comptroller in lieu of a finance chief appointed by the mayor. The current structure dilutes the mayor’s power by forcing her to share spending authority with two other elected officials, while giving one of them oversight of the finance department. Critics say it delays decisions and allows for additional political maneuvering.

But Comptroller Green, who has been in office for nearly 30 years, and her supporters railed against the current proposal at a public forum last week. Mayor Jones also came out in opposition. The charter commission the next day dropped the proposal.

Eliminating an elected position long held by a Black politician was seen as an “attack” on Black voting power in the city, Swanstrom said.

“It seems as though this did get in part shipwrecked on the shoals of racial division,” he said.

An effort here 20 years ago proposed a similar change. It was supported by two former mayors (both Black) and former Comptroller Virvus Jones, the father of the current mayor. At the time, Virvus Jones said the E&A arrangement contributed to his political fights with former Mayor Vince Schoemehl, which he said were “about power.”

“The old charter made us like two scorpions in a bottle,” Jones, a paid consultant for the 2004 effort, told the Post-Dispatch then. “I had no clear authority over the city’s finances, but neither did the mayor.”

Jones said Monday his thoughts had changed since the ill-fated 2004 proposals, which Green, still in office back then, also opposed. Voters rejected them handily.

The current charter commission, like the effort 20 years ago, probably “tried to bite off too much” and didn’t do enough public engagement to build support for its proposals, Virvus Jones said. The comptroller’s office serves as an important “check” on mayoral power, he said.

This latest effort may be the most recent entry in a long St. Louis history of failed government reform. A proposal to merge St. Louis and St. Louis County governments collapsed in 2019 after its chosen leader, former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, pleaded guilty to corruption charges. After that, St. Louis officials couldn’t even seat members of the Board of Freeholders to examine governmental changes, killing that effort before it even began four years ago. Prior decades are filled with similar failures.

As it continues to lose residents and struggles to provide services, St. Louis needs to show it can modernize its government, Swanstrom said.

“Unfortunately, it seems to have played out, this historic trend that charter reformers are not viewed as expanding democracy but rather shrinking it,” he said.