ST. LOUIS, Missouri – On Tuesday, Metro announced what rumors emerging from the candidate selection process had said for weeks: that John Nations, third-term mayor of Chesterfield, would be its new CEO.
Among those singing Nation’s praises at the press event was County Executive Charlie A. Dooley. “John Nations is going to lead us forward in the 21st century,” Dooley said.
When questioned about the selection process, Dooley and Metro officials described an apparently transparent public process that began with 26 “stakeholders,” six of whom were African-American.
Dooley said the Metro board, including his three appointees, “established a process that included an extensive opportunity for stakeholders to help establish the characteristics of leadership as well as experience and capacity required to lead our Metro system for the foreseeable future.”
However, several of those “stakeholders” told The American that, following this general forum, the selection process went internal and they were not consulted again, as promised, concerning candidates.
According to a spokesperson for Metro, the Board of Commissioners had the final decision for who would become the new Metro CEO. The board is made of 10 members, five from Missouri and five from Illinois. Of the 10 members, three are African-American. Vincent C. Schoemehl is its chair.
Metro officials said four board members, one of whom was African-American, were given the task to make a recommendation for the new Metro CEO. According to sources that followed the process closely, this committee (chaired by Hugh Scott) had qualified black candidates in the pool but produced a short list that included none of them.
State Sen. Robin Wright-Jones, a longtime Metro supporter, said the process flouted the broad, diverse coalition that passed Proposition A in April. This measure will fund Metro by increasing sales tax in St. Louis County by a half-cent and triggering a quarter-cent sales tax increase in the city.
“It was a broad coalition, with many black voters in North County, that passed Prop A,” Wright-Jones said. “And at the end of the process, for the first major decision, we end up with a short list of white people.”
Nations was a significant proponent and frontman for the passage of Proposition A. However, a coalition of North County clergy and African-American civic leaders were instrumental in its passage. The day after the April 6 election, interim Metro CEO Robert Baer said African-American leadership was “instrumental to this thing passing.”
Wright-Jones said Dooley lapsed in leadership in letting the Metro CEO selection process go completely internal and abandon its diversity consciousness.
“Charlie Dooley let down the home team,” Wright-Jones said.
Metro officials, Dooley and Nations made no reference to race in their prepared remarks on Tuesday, though they specified diversity on the board and selection committee and in the “stakeholders’” forum when questioned by media.
Nations said his three main goals as CEO would be restoring service, operating in a responsible way, and using Metro transit services as an economic tool.
“When I think of what Metro needs,” Wright-Jones said, “I think of black people standing in the middle of the street and waiting on a bus in North St. Louis or North County – a bus that might never come. We have almost no access to MetroLink.”
Nations is resigning as mayor of Chesterfield and will begin his new $250,000 a year job in October.
Dooley said of Nations, “I’m going to hold his foot to the fire to make sure he keeps every promise he made.”
