It shouldn’t be surprising that County Executive Charlie Dooley ran up big numbers in his re-election race. He did it the same way he always has, which is to take in tons of money from developers and special interests.
When Dooley first ran for St. Louis County Council in 1994, special interests contributed nearly $100,000 to his campaign. They have given him millions of dollars more since then, and Dooley has backed them virtually 100 percent in return.
A notable example was Dooley’s support for giving $110 million of county tax money to help the billionaire owners of the St. Louis Cardinals pay for their new stadium in downtown St. Louis.
Dooley supported the $1 billion “runway to nowhere” at the airport which caused a large part of North County to be bulldozed. He also supported the 8-mile, $1.1 billion MetroLink expansion, which came in hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. County taxpayers will be picking up $800 million of the cost.
While Dooley has backed various boondoggles, many neighborhoods in the council district he represented for many years have continually declined. The old Wellston shopping district looks like a bombed out part of Iraq.
Tom Sullivan
St. Louis