The EYE would like to share a story told about Paul McKee Jr. by someone who knows him well that may provide some insight for the wider public about the kind of political operator he is.
It is said some years ago that McKee and other business leaders in St. Charles County called a meeting with their state legislators. The business leaders briefed the area’s state legislators on their verdict as to who had the votes in the Republican caucus to nab the top legislative spots in the Missouri House and Senate in the next session. The business leaders, who had in effect paid to elect these representatives, told them they had a high degree of confidence in their findings. They then pointedly suggested that the legislators get behind these front runners now so they would have good relationships with the people who would be steering legislation in Jefferson City.
The business leaders then took a straw poll, asking who these legislators planned to support for their legislative leadership. Some legislators said they planned to support different candidates than the ones the business leaders said would win, whether out of personal loyalty or a different sense of who had the votes. These legislators were told point-blank that they should reconsider their support, and those who did not line up with the business leaders would not be not invited to further meetings with them.
The business leaders were accurate with every prediction as to who would be handling legislation in the next session. Not only did they then ignore the legislators who did not back the winning horses when given a chance, they began to recruit and fund opponents to oppose them in their next Republican primary.
This story says a great deal about McKee. He is shrewd, blunt and action-oriented. He comes right at you and attempts to win you over before, if necessary, he warns you that he is going to go right through or around you. This direct approach to politics that he honed in St. Charles County was what he brought to the city of St. Louis when he began his Northside redevelopment project. It earned him some enemies, but it should not have branded him as evasive.
‘will not ever’
Michael R. Allen, the independent researcher who outed McKee’s land-banking on the North Side (and by now has assumed stances on multiple sides of McKee’s project), blogged a response to the EYE’s previous column on McKee. Whether intentionally or not, Allen’s blog post is positioned to keep alive the urban legend that McKee intends to employ eminent domain in the Northside redevelopment.
McKee’s counsel Paul Puricelli addresses this matter bluntly to the Missouri Supreme Court in a brief currently before the court. W. Bevis Schock and other attorneys for the intervenors in the suit filed against Northside raised the same specter of eminent domain repeatedly in their court filings. Puricelli, representing McKee, quotes from the redevelopment agreement: “The use of eminent domain will not be allowed pursuant to this Redevelopment Plan.” The plan also states, as Puricelli reminds the court with direct quotation, that Northside “has not identified any owner-occupied residences for acquisition through the use of eminent domain.”
Schock in his brief and Allen in his blog indicate that the city still retains powers of eminent domain, so eminent domain still could be pursued for Northside. McKee’s counsel bluntly dismisses that possibility: “Northside would have to petition the Board of Aldermen for that power and, as Northside represented in the Redevelopment Plan and countless times thereafter: Northside will not ever seek the power of eminent domain to uproot citizens of North St. Louis from their homes” (emphasis in the original).
This is not a promise whispered in a North City church on Sunday morning. This is bluntly stated in a legal brief stamped as received by the Missouri Supreme Court. “Northside will not ever seek the power of eminent domain to uproot citizens of North St. Louis from their homes.” Truly, the EYE is at a loss to know what more McKee can do to slay this urban legend. Does the man need to publicly slice off a finger or toe and seal the deal in blood?
4.99 percent of nothing
The EYE does acknowledge an imprecision in saying that the Land Assemblage Tax Credit legislation also forbids use of eminent domain on the Northside redevelopment. What the legislation does is severely restrict possible use of eminent domain in any development that gets the tax credit. It states that if more than 4.99 percent of the parcels acquired within the project area are acquired using eminent domain, then the area is not an Eligible Project Area and none of the parcels acquired (with or without eminent domain) qualify for the tax credit.
So McKee is entitled to pursue eminent domain to acquire up to 4.99 percent of the redevelopment area, though he has not made any attempt to date – and he is on record with the City of St. Louis and the Missouri Supreme Court as stating “Northside will not ever seek the power of eminent domain to uproot citizens of North St. Louis from their homes.”
Slay’s chief
When local control passed on the November ballot, the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners was still considering the appointment of the next police chief. This means that suddenly a board of mostly gubernatorial appointees was left as a de facto lame duck empowered to pick a police chief who, as of next summer, will be someone else’s management problem. The current police board structure will be dissolved, leaving its current ex officio board member, Mayor Francis G. Slay, managing the police chief via his director of safety.
Slay – speaking to The American, as he has recently learned to do – said after the election that it was important for the police board to choose a chief who would work well with his administration, since the chief would soon be working for him. So there was no surprise last week when the board announced Sam Dotson as the new police chief. Last seen in uniform at the rank of captain, Dotson has been working for the mayor on loan from the police department as Slay’s director of operations. As Dotson noted to The Beacon, police chief is a kind of demotion from his current position. Now, Slay’s public safety director Eddie Roth reports to Dotson as director of operations, but after Dotson suits up as top cop on January 1 he will report to the public safety director.
Jerry Berger speculates that new public safety director will be Richard Gray, who chairs the police board that appointed Dotson. Hmmm.
Dannielle didn’t spill
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be fraudsters!
Dannielle Benson, owner of Dankar Enterprises, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and restitution of $223,546 for bilking the City of St. Louis in her contract to provide parking services as a Treasurer’s Office subcontractor. Benson billed the city to pay ghost workers and a ghost lobbyist who did no work. The feds threw the sentencing guidelines at her because she refused to cooperate and implicate others in her scheme.
That means former Treasurer Larry Williams and the never officially identified ghost lobbyist are likely to skate free. This must be disappointing for the Post-Dispatch, which has been preparing a prison cell for Williams for years. Perhaps the Post also will now be moved to issue a retraction to Rodney Hubbard Jr. the man the Post identified, according to only anonymous sources, as the fraudster ghost lobbyist.
