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St. Louis County Council wants to hear from Port Authority members

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jo Mannies,
Jason Rosenbaum
Published July 24, 2018 at 9:18 PM CDT
Councilmembers Ernie Trakas, R-Oakville, and Sam Page, D-Creve Coeur, talk to reporters Tuesday after a meeting.
Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
Councilmembers Ernie Trakas, R-Oakville, and Sam Page, D-Creve Coeur, talk to reporters Tuesday after a meeting.

Members of the St. Louis County Council may try to subpoena people who have served as members of the St. Louis County Port Authority.

It’s the latest salvo in a long-running feud between the council and St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, a schism that will likely remain even if the Democratic chief executive wins his primary next month.

Several members of the County Council, including chairman Sam Page, have raised questions about how the Port Authorityawards contracts and real-estate deals.Page, D-Creve Coeur, has been among the critics concerned about the authority’s handling of a land deal for a planned police station in south St. Louis County.

On Tuesday, the council’s ethics committee was at least temporarily thwarted in its quest to talk with members of the county’s Port Authority.

Of the six members of the Port Authority invited to speak to the committee, none showed up. Ethics committee Chairman Ernie Trakas said the council may move next to subpoena the port commissioners.

“While the committee and the council are not law enforcement, we still need, and indeed are charged with, the responsibility of understanding how millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent, so that we can protect the taxpayer,” Trakas said during Tuesday night’s council meeting.

Jefferson City lawyer Chuck Hatfield, who represents the Port Authority commissioners, told the committee in a letter than the commissioners needed a clearer picture of what the committee wanted to ask them about.

Hatfield indicated Tuesday on Twitter that it’s unclear whether the County Council has subpoena powers. Stenger spokesman Cordell Whitlock said that since the Port Authority is a state entity, the council doesn’t have the authority to use its subpoena powers to summon members to its committee.

Last week, Page led a successful override of a bill that he says dissolves the county Port Authority’s board of commissioners. That bill – which had been vetoed by Stenger – bars members of the Port Authority from continuing to serve because all have expired terms.

The bill calls for Stenger to appoint new Port Authority commissioners, who then must be confirmed by the council.

Stenger said in an interview last week that Page was “delusional’’ in believing the council had the power to shut down the Port Authority’s board. He says the commissioners are staying put.

“The charter specifically states that all of the terms that are even expired terms under the charter are continued until individuals are replaced,” Stenger said last week.

Follow Jo on Twitter:@jmannies

Follow Jason on Twitter:@jrosenbaum

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Missouri News
Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
See stories by Jo Mannies
Jason Rosenbaum
Since entering the world of professional journalism in 2006, Jason Rosenbaum dove head first into the world of politics, policy and even rock and roll music. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Rosenbaum spent more than four years in the Missouri State Capitol writing for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Lawyers Media and the St. Louis Beacon.
See stories by Jason Rosenbaum