ST. LOUIS — A city commission is considering plans to abolish St. Louis’ unusual three-headed executive branch, eliminate the elected comptroller position, and then create a new watchdog for City Hall.
After months of brainstorming ideas to reform city government, the Charter Commission kicked off debate Monday by taking on some of the city’s most powerful institutions, which govern the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
The proposals, a sampling of many currently before the commission, are far from final. The commission can only recommend changes for voters to consider. And commissioners still have several months to vet, amend or discard plans before making a final submission for the November ballot, where they will need 60% of the vote to pass.
Still, the ideas discussed Monday marked a revival of a longstanding debates in city politics. Similar plans made it to the ballot 20 years ago, only to fall short. But the new debate could set the stage for a rematch with a system long derided by good-government advocates as inefficient and obsolete. And the ideas already attracting attention.
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“They’re bold ideas,” said Ken Warren, a longtime political scientist at St. Louis University. “They’re good ideas.”
Ƶ would target some of the marquee achievements of the city’s 1914 charter: The Board of Estimate and Apportionment and the city comptroller’s office. Advocates implemented both in an effort to curb corruption by diluting the mayor’s power over city finances.
The Estimate Board, composed of the mayor, the comptroller, and the aldermanic president, requires the chief executive to convince at least one of the other two to sign off on any spending. Having an independent comptroller’s office allows all bills to be paid separately from the mayor’s office. And a requirement for the comptroller to sign all contracts before they can become final gives leverage to resist a questionable deal.
But over the decades, critics have noted that the Estimate Board and the comptroller’s office are also chokepoints that enable more political maneuvering and delays in decision-making. While mayors in other cities only have to negotiate budgets with legislators, the mayor of St. Louis has to horse-trade with two other officials with unusually powerful leverage.
Comptroller Darlene Green has also come under fire in recent months for failing to pay the city’s bills on time, and letting too many contracts sit awaiting her signature.
Charter Commissioner Christopher Grant, a lawyer and one of multiple members who presented such ideas for discussion, acknowledged in the commission meeting on Monday night that the changes would be radical shifts.
“But there would be this hope that there would be greater efficiency, that these decisions could be made quicker,” he said.
The mayor would only have to negotiate with the Board of Aldermen, which would gain some new power to make increases as well as decreases to proposed budgets to better counter an offer from the chief executive. The comptroller’s responsibility for financial affairs would shift to a mayor-appointed finance director and department.
The commission members are also thinking about a new elected official, the Public Advocate. That person would carry on the comptroller’s watchdog role of auditing city agencies while also doing new jobs like getting more people paying attention to city government.
“It would not be totally alien territory,” said commissioner Anna Crosslin, the former director of the International Institute of St. Louis.
Grant said the new Public Advocate could also be guaranteed funding to insulate it from critics elsewhere in City Hall.
The commission did not take a vote on the idea Monday night.
But some commissioners were wary of erasing an institution with more than a century of history in the city.
“Maybe we need to address some things in phases and steps,” said commission chair Jazzmine Nolan-Echols, a business consultant.
Others, like Travis Sheridan, a real estate executive, said the city needs to be bold. “If St. Louis was working, we wouldn’t need to fix it,” he said.
Elsewhere, the members of the Estimate Board watched with varying levels of approval.
Aldermanic President Megan Green initially said she liked the idea of eliminating the Estimate Board. She said spending debates between the mayor and a newly empowered Board of Aldermen, which holds more public meetings than any other city entity, would be more transparent.
But later Monday, she expressed concern that the changes would concentrate too much power in the executive branch.
Conner Kerrigan, a spokesperson for the mayor, said he wasn’t sure the changes would improve operations, and suggested that allowing the aldermen to make budget increases without requiring approval from an Estimate Board could lead to unbalanced budgets.
Comptroller Darlene Green declined comment, referring a reporter to spokesperson Tiara Thomas, Green’s non-voting representative on the commission.
“The current recommendations by the Charter Commission are evolving and on-going developments,” Thomas wrote in an email. “The Comptroller’s Office and its Charter Commission representative will continue to follow the process.”