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The fight for local control of
the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has been a long and
frustrating battle. Gubernatorial control – instituted by the state
Legislature for Missouri’s two urban police departments (St. Louis
and Kansas City) as a Civil War tactic in a slave state – has
proved to be resistant to change. Out-state legislators whose
support is necessary to undo the 19th century
legislation have failed to see this as their issue for a century
and a half. No governor, including the current sitting governor,
has been in any hurry to relinquish key appointing powers in the
state’s two population centers. The police unions have fought local
control legislation for decades, making it politically costly for
the mayors to support it openly and work toward it
aggressively.
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That changed
this year. Sparked by fear of local control ballot initiatives
instigated by billionaire financier Rex Sinquefield, the St. Louis
Police Officers Associations set to work amending local control
legislation, rather than attempting to kill it; as a result, they
won stronger protections for police pensions and the right to
collective bargaining for some personnel. Mayor Francis G. Slay,
who has sent mixed signals on local control for most of his tenure,
finally came down strongly in favor of it and facilitated dialogue
between Sinquefield and the POA. A bi-partisan legislative
consensus in favor of local control, incipient in recent years, was
solidified. The Legislature did not succeed in passing the amended
bill before the session closed, though they took local control
further than ever before.
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The one
character missing from this account of change is Gov. Jay Nixon.
Nixon has said he will call a special session of the Legislature in
September but has been coy, or cautious, about the complete agenda.
“He doesn’t want there to be controversy from one bill bleeding
over to another,” Jeff Roorda of the POA told
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everything to raise his comfort level with the consensus behind our
bill.”
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As we have
stated in regards to the Aerotropolis incentives bundled in the
economic development bill, Nixon now has an historic opportunity to
be a critical change agent in getting local control for the St.
Louis and Kansas City police departments passed into law. It is
essential that Nixon put local control on the agenda for the
special session and encourage all legislators in his party to vote
in support of it. To be very clear, Nixon’s presumptive Republican
opponent in 2012, Peter Kinder, has stated his support for local
control. If Nixon refuses to do everything in his power to get this
bill passed, he will hand his Republican opponent a campaign
advantage in the urban Democratic strongholds so crucial to
statewide candidates in 2012.
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If Nixon does
the right thing, and legislators finish the painstaking work on
local control they accomplished this session, the next effort
begins. Though every city of scale should administer its own police
department, the St. Louis City Charter is woefully inadequate in
its provisions for the police. The director of Public Safety (a
mayoral appointee) would appoint one police commissioner who could
be fired by his boss – or by the governor! – “with or without
cause.” Such a police commissioner would be a hopelessly
compromised creature of power politics. Once the governor and state
Legislature do their jobs, we have the difficult task of getting
the voters to reform the City Charter and rewrite completely the
governance provisions for the police department.
