Tony Messenger
Metro columnist
In the summer of 1875, Nicholas A. Mortell stood alone.
Mortell, a lawyer by trade, was one of 66 Missourians elected to a in Jefferson City. Among the key issues?
What to do about St. Louis.
Since pretty much its inception, the city of St. Louis has been in conflict with the county by the same name that surrounds it. In the 19th century, the city had nearly all the power, and many elected officials wanted to keep it that way. Its leaders proposed a split, creating the separate entities that survive today.
At the time, a few elected officials wanted to go the other way and unite the city and the county as a way to end their constant squabbling.
Mortell was in that camp.
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“I am in favor of total consolidation of St. Louis County, but I am not in favor of dividing it, splitting and hacking it in this manner,†the St. Louis lawyer said at the time. “I vote no.â€
The ayes had it. The statewide constitutional convention created the opportunity for the city and county to vote on the split, and to create a unique city-county form of government in the city of St. Louis.
That happened a year later. The vote failed. It was overturned in court.
St. Louis has been a house divided ever since.
In 2020, that might change.
Sometime in coming days or weeks, the nonprofit organization is expected to announce plans to put an initiative on the statewide ballot to do what Mortell wanted to do more than a century ago.
Call it consolidation, merger or marriage. Call it whatever you want. The plan, in the works since 2013, with one boundary that unites the city and the county.
And before they’ve seen the details, nearly every mayor in the St. Louis region not named Lyda Krewson has already panned the plan.
“I think it should be renamed ‘Better Without Us,’†longtime Florissant Mayor Tom Schneider told the Post-Dispatch.
Schneider, of course, is the same mayor not long ago to coerce his municipal court into erasing his son’s old criminal conviction.
It’s hard to let go of power.
From 1875 to 2019, that’s what the issue of consolidation or separation has been about: power.
Back then, the city had it and wanted to keep it from the county. Eventually, hordes of city residents fled to the county, setting up their own enclaves, more than 90 of them (down to 88 recently), so that they didn’t have to share the power, or some of their tax revenue.
All that power grabbing led to a giant sucking sound leaving St. Louis as a region.
As the county was carved up, the power dissipated, both for the city and the region as a whole. Now the city and county each have broken budgets and dysfunctional governmental bodies. The economic power of St. Louis is dwindling. Regional leaders want St. Louis to reclaim the city’s great place as the Gateway to the West.
Here’s how St. Louis Blues owner Tom Stillman :
“We can continue with more than 100 jurisdictions, often working at cross-purposes, or we can unite and work together to build a stronger community and a brighter future.â€
It’s time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
It won’t be easy.
Mayors will say no. Cross-state columnists . The region’s historic racial chasms will tremble like the New Madrid fault.
Black municipal mayors will suggest that consolidation of power will hurt racial equity, but that will ignore the conclusions of the “Forward Through Ferguson†report, which called for of police departments and municipal courts, used by cash-strapped cities for too long as a fundraising source.
In fact, Will Ross, a Better Together task force member, in 2017, “Stronger regional governance would … ultimately enable the African-American community to seek solutions of the magnitude to the problems that affect us. Contrary to some opinions, rather than being lessened by regionalism, we will be stronger, focused, and committed to a strategic vision where everyone is a winner in the St. Louis region.â€
Others will oppose a statewide vote, but, that, too, ignores the history of how St. Louis got here in the first place, in a statewide constitutional convention that set the stage for a local vote that ended up being overturned in court anyway. And that was before the creation of all the municipalities that are, by their very nature, political creatures of the state.
Amid similar circumstances in 1875, Mortell took to the floor of the Missouri Capitol and pleaded for unity. The Irish immigrant told his fellow representatives, including Joseph Pulitzer, that it was his “first-born conviction†to oppose the division that ultimately mapped the decline of St. Louis.
After more than a century of splitting and hacking, it’s time to take Mortell’s advice.
A greater St. Louis awaits.
