Krewson unloads on Page and Elhmann, good for the Mayor
the money quote "Isn't that interesting that St. Charles County and St. Louis County would all of a sudden take a regional approach," Krewson said. "Think about St. Charles over the years. They've refused to be regional partners on MetroLink, the convention center, the Zoo-Museum District, Enterprise Center, football. They and St. Louis County didn't want anything to do with MLS. ... This comes on the heels of (St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar) thinking he should take over the city police department. The county thinks they should take over Bi-State... All of a sudden we've got the discussion going on about leasing the operations of the airport, with the possibility that we will get a better airport and maybe millions or billions of dollars in revenue, and now they want to talk about a regional partnership for an asset that the city has owned for 99 years now."
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson said Tuesday that St. Charles and St. Louis counties should have warned the city before taking steps to study whether St. Louis Lambert International Airport, long owned by the city and targeted for privatization, should fall under regional control.
"I do think the fact that we had no heads up on this, not even a courtesy call — 'Hey, we're going to study your airport' — is not exactly in the spirit of cooperation and regionalism," Krewson said in an interview. "It's not very neighborly."
St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann wrote in a Business Journal op-ed last week that the decision to privatize Lambert's operations — a "regionally important decision" — would be made by the board of aldermen of a city that contains only 12% of the region’s citizens. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch then reported that the St. Louis County Port Authority, in a move supported by St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and Ehlmann, could hire a contractor to study regional governance of the airport.
"Isn't that interesting that St. Charles County and St. Louis County would all of a sudden take a regional approach," Krewson said. "Think about St. Charles over the years. They've refused to be regional partners on MetroLink, the convention center, the Zoo-Museum District, Enterprise Center, football. They and St. Louis County didn't want anything to do with MLS. ... This comes on the heels of (St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar) thinking he should take over the city police department. The county thinks they should take over Bi-State... All of a sudden we've got the discussion going on about leasing the operations of the airport, with the possibility that we will get a better airport and maybe millions or billions of dollars in revenue, and now they want to talk about a regional partnership for an asset that the city has owned for 99 years now."
But Krewson also said she would be open to learning from any study done by the county. "If they're spending their money, I'm not opposed to whatever might come out of that," she said. "I'm all about gathering information here."
Page spokesman Doug Moore said conversations about regional governance of Lambert have gone on for nearly half of the Airport Authority's existence. The city created it in 1968.
"Since the 1980s, St. Louis County has been represented on the Airport Commission," Moore said in a statement. "By 1997, there was an open conversation about whether Lambert Airport should be regionally governed. Since then, this sustained conversation about regional governance has taken many forms including state legislation, a report from the Senate Interim Committee on Regional Control of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, a study by UMSL's Public Policy Research Center, and numerous studies by business organizations and interested residents."
"Now the Port Authority, which is appointed by the County Council, may fund a new evaluation of regional governance," Moore said. "The Port Authority's efforts could be an important next step in this ongoing public dialogue."
Ehlmann said in a statement Tuesday that although St Charles and St. Louis counties may want regional governance, “we are political subdivisions of the state, too.”
"The legislature will have to change the statute,” he said.
Addressing the privatization process, which took a big step forward this month when the city issued a request for qualifications to firms interested in bidding, Krewson said the city should be "thinking big."
"If we really wanted to be competitive, we ought to be thinking about a new terminal," Krewson said.
She also listed possible uses for any revenue the city would get from a lease: paying employees competitively, addressing vacancies, repairing bridges, improving parks and creating "human programs and assets on the prevention side of curing violence."
