I have not had adequate time to digest this article. At this time, however, I wish to point out that publication was in the quarterly journal of the organization paid by Civic Progress for part of the charter reform circus. It is not surprising that the Confederate flag incident is how the story starts out.

Though the analysis does strongly suggest problems with the process of determining the reforms (a point I whole-heartedly endorse), it misses the issue of the election timing. The proponents of ABC & D chose to place these issues before the voters in the General Election during the Presidential cycle. This is the one time that the St. Louis political class becomes strongly engaged in electioneering. The '04 cycle was particularly tough for the proponents because of the emergence of the 527's and their active ground game and a re-energized Democratic City Party. Those two issues combined with the aldermanic/institutional opposition provided the perfect storm for the failure of the initiative(s).
Any effort to bring these or other reforms would be more likely to succeed if they included the politicians and time the elections better.

Page 10 is where it is revealed that one of the authors was also one of the authors of the 1997 Walker Report, the basis for the most recent losing charter reform movement.

Sources for the most part were proponents, including the Post-Dispatch, including editorials, though it could be argued that nearly all coverage of the issue by our lone daily was editorially driven, a cause and not a fact finding mission.

The authors, like most of the vocal proponents, either had little if any knowledge of county government, state law, and the Missouri Constitution, or chose not to let it stand in the way of the cause.

While the review is critical of the process, the suggested solution appears to be for reformers to lure aldermen with promises of more power.

The authors make no attempt to review the constitutional amendment and proposed charter amendments for flaws, of which there were many. This is not surprising since the authors accepted the propaganda by proponents as fact instead of opinion.

It appears that no county official was contacted by the authors for input. The mayor and comptroller also appear to have been nonplayers during the intelligence gathering.

In some future charter reform debacle, we can look forward to the Post-Dispatch editorial board citing this review, similar to the Walker Report this past round, as if the masses knew what the heck they were talking about and as if it were some unbiased masterpeice.

The main intiatives fro reform should focus first on the Police Department and wresting control from the state legislature and secondly making the Board of Aldermedn smaller and more accountable for policy within the city.

Dividing the City into four legislative districts of 7 wards each with a committee structure and a President elected at large would make more sense. The alderman would then report to the committee of each ward in a legislative district to determine legislative agendas for the ward and the 28 committees meeting to determine the citywide agenda.

I am with you on regaining control over our police department.

But could you please elaborate about these proposed committees of each ward? I do not understand the membership, structure, legal status, relationship to alderman, purpose.

While I think it would be nice to have local control of the police department, I don't understand why people think this should be the first target of reform. Getting control will take a state wide action which I think would involve a constitutional amendment. If we are dealing with a limited number of resources in terms of people's efforts and money, why would we target getting control over the police department over other possible reforms. What would change if we had local control?

You must be under the impression that the state pays for our police department since the state runs it. Sadly, no, we are forced to pay for the department but have no control over its budget or policies. There is no accountability to taxpayers. Public Safety being the largest chunk of the city's budget, having a Gov appointed Police Board means the Gov controls a large portion of our budget. As priorities go, I cannot think of another more important.

Could it be that the Citizens of the City of St. Louis saw through this "power grab" and killed it. God forbid the people would actualy know what they want and not Downtown inc, Burt Walker and The Post Discrace.

The committee could be as simple as the ward committees now in place. The committees could be as simple as the ward committee structure is now. Four legislative districts made up of 7 wards, with each legislator having a support staff or a district ombudsman to handle the service issues, ie; trash, lighting etc., and the legislative body having a research staff to develop city policy. The legislator would meet regularly with the committee (weekly) to develop initiatives for the legislative district. This really needs more work but in theory it would be a great step forward.

Everyone that keeps framing the Charter Amendments as a "power grab" has never actually read the amendments.

People who keep denying the "power grab" must have written the aaamendments.

Having reviewed the amendments more times than my family will ever appreciate, and compared the proposed changes to the charters of St. Louis City, Kansas City, St. Louis County, St. Charles County, and Jackson County, it is my opinion that the amendments were indeed a power grab, though not the one the opposition (for which I do not have many kind words) should have given focus, and was certainly not about empowering the mayor, though sadly the bulk of supporters may have believed to be the case.

It was an attempt by certain business princes to replace the politics of voters and those they elect, including the mayor, with the politics of the relationship between bureaucrats and business. The mayor would not have had hire and fire authority over these bureaucrats. They would have been more powerful than the mayor. The goal was to create a system whereby business would decide who it dealt with in government and this would be done outside the process that involves voters.

The amusing part about all this is that some (maybe most, but some I am sure) of the business players are parties to corporate bureaucracies with dizzying reporting structures that resemble the family tree of the House of Saud, and are mired in the sort of day to day Machiavellian politics, from the business princes to janitorial staff, that if similarly in play in local government would lead to armed insurrection by taxpayers.

Also, having spent a little more time reviewing the review, it occurs to me that this article, in part, is intended to absolve National Civic League for its part in the process.

And, to Bob Johnson, I appreciate the additional information on your proposal but remain confused. The only current ward-based committees that I am aware of are continuing committees organized under Missouri's Ethic's laws (campaign finance). While organized under political party labels, they are not recognized as party committees under the law but, rather, are in the same class as PACs. As reported in a recent issue of ACC, some wards have more than one committee under the Democratic label and the 10th Ward has a committee under the Republican label but none for Democrats organized under the laws of Missouri.

Perhaps I am not grasping your idea because Monty Python is on PBS and I find the similarities between many of the skits and our City's most recent attempt at large scale government reform to be quite remarkable. It is difficult to concentrate under such pressures.