At a moment of historic bitter rancor on the national political scene, fueled by excessive media coverage of a very noisy and hateful right-wing minority, St. Louis suddenly has offered a bright and encouraging splash of hope.
The partisan polarization of the U.S. Congress over the passage of health insurance reform stunned the world and made it a miserable experience to follow politics in Washington, D.C. Here in the St. Louis metropolitan area, our regional fragmentation between city and county, and the racial divide between black and white, have hobbled our progress and growth immeasurably for many decades.
Yet here we have just experienced a broad, diverse, bipartisan, multiracial, regional coalition come together and convince voters to pass a tax increase to fund public transit. Yes, people drove to the polls and voted – by a crushing majority – to increase their taxes marginally so that others who need public transit will continue to have access to it.
They were educated and motivated to vote, by nearly a 2-1 margin, for a future St. Louis that is better connected regionally and less dependent on the automobiles that dominate our landscape and made the reconstruction of an area interstate highway (somewhat pathetically) one of the major news stories of 2009.
The voters to whom we owe our thanks all live in St. Louis County, which considered Proposition A on every ballot in the county on Tuesday. The half-cent sales tax increase they approved applies only to the county. However, its passage also triggers a quarter-cent sales tax increase previously approved by city voters in 1997 that was contingent upon the county following suit.
And the encouraging regional cooperation we saw in the push to pass Proposition A only serves to underscore what we all already know, no matter what we sometimes say: We are one St. Louis.
The person who lives in the county spends money in the city that now will be taxed slightly higher to pay for transit. The person who lives in the city spends money in the county that now will be taxed slightly higher to pay for transit. St. Louis is a tourist destination and regional hub that attracts guests and shoppers from many surrounding counties and the Metro East. The transit all our taxes are paying for connects the city to the county – and the road, the bus route, the light rail line ahead of us now looks a little brighter.
Perhaps our media can pause and reconsider the narratives they have been recycling lately. This sweeping affirmation of the importance of taxing the public to maintain and expand public services challenges the story we are being told that the nation is swinging to the right – toward a right that uses increasingly paranoid language equating taxation and public services with “socialism.”
The American is proud to have joined the collaborative effort that led to the passage of this important initiative, which will keep a diverse workforce employed by Metro and maintain and eventually expand the public transit services so many of us rely upon. But we know you can only dance in the end zone during a game where a touchdown stops the clock. And in real life, nothing stops the clock. Now that the public has placed its trust in Metro, we expect from Metro greater transparency and accountability to the needs of the public – Democrat and Republican, city and county, black and white.