After working for 4 St. Louis mayors, Nahuel Fefer knows what’s broken at City Hall

Nahuel Fefer is among the very few political appointees who have served in St. Louis city government under four different mayors—beginning as a WashU undergrad under Francis Slay and later becoming policy director and then executive director of the Community Development Administration under Tishaura Jones, along with shorter stints under Lyda Krewson and Cara Spencer. That work offered a crash course in the City of St. Louis, an unusual focus for a native of Argentina who spent his formative years in Boston and later earned a law degree from New York University. 

Yet for Fefer, that education was a wonderful gift. “I feel like I grew up here in St. Louis,” he says. “And it’s home.”

Seeing vastly different administrations navigate City Hall has given Fefer insight into processes that go beyond personalities. It’s also left him convinced that the city is fundamentally broken—but not in the ways you might assume. 

On a new episode of The 314 Podcast, Fefer explained that, over time, the city has created structural problems that only a charter commission could fix. There are essentially too many checks and balances. Says Fefer, “We often unnecessarily overcomplicate our solutions and wind up creating worse problems and, critically, less accountability. Because with hiring, with contracting, with budgeting, it’s not clear where power lies because it’s actually split into seven different fiefdoms. That also means that it’s difficult for voters to hold people accountable, and it’s easy for mayors to pass the buck.”

He adds, “You can’t do anything in city government and business in any context if you can’t hire good people and if you can’t contract and procure good partners. And I think both of those basic processes, both of which start with budgeting, are pretty profoundly broken in St. Louis.”

Fefer had both the blessing and curse of running the Community Development Administration while the city was flush with American Rescue Plan Act dollars: A blessing because the money allowed his agency to build, and rehab, a lot of affordable housing. A curse in that, especially with all those fiefdoms, spending money can be surprisingly hard, if you care about doing it right. Fefer says he worked hard to get processes in place and scale up to spend its portion of the city’s $498 million in ARPA funds—only to rapidly scale back down once the money was spent.

It’s a frustrating cycle, but he tries not to get mired in that. “My lesson that I take from this is that the federal government isn’t going to save us, at least not anytime soon,” he says. “And we have to find the resources here at the local level, in order to build the kind of city that we want to call home. ”

Go Deeper: Fefer would like to see the city convene a new charter commission, one that gets serious about untangling its mass of duplicative agencies. (Specific ideas include eliminating the powerful Board of Estimate and Apportionment.) The problem, he notes, is that city leaders would have to be serious about tackling structural reform—and not flinch if the people affected try to make it personal.

“I think that one of the challenges that each mayor runs into is the fact that making some of these structural changes requires some short-term costs, in terms of political capital with the comptroller’s office, with the personnel department, in terms of what it would take to, to really make budgeting, hiring and contracting processes work better,” he says. “And it’s not something that ever makes sense to do in the short term.” Exhibit A might be what happened last time around: The charter commission sought to abolish the comptroller’s office, only to see then-Comptroller Darlene Green rise up to defend her turf. That was a political battle no one had the stomach to fight, and the moment was lost (even though, ironically, Green later lost her seat anyway).

Only after true charter reform, Fefer says, could the city begin moving on city-county reunification—a cause he ardently supports if it’s done right. (He was critical of the Better Together plan because, he says, it wasn’t.)

And to do it right, Fefer floated an idea that could resolve needless duplication on the city/county level but also help the distinct areas of the region maintain their independence. He likes the idea of a borough system, as in New York City, with the City of St. Louis becoming one borough (the Manhattan) and different parts of the county also getting to control their own destinies, to some extent.

“It’s basically a local federalism,” he says. “And it can provide a lot of flexibility in that different boroughs can have different powers and different municipal planning districts within each borough can have different powers. Boroughs out in West County can decide to leave a lot of property tax and a lot of powers to their municipal planning districts. And South County or North County can make different decisions for more consolidation or more independence.” But, he quickly adds, “All that to say, the borough plan does presume a functional city.”

What’s Next: Fefer is now back in the Boston area, where he and his wife are awaiting the birth of their first child in July. His wife, a journalist at NBC News, landed a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, which triggered the timing of their move, but he acknowledges having family nearby once they have a newborn to parent will also be a huge help.

Fefer has started a law firm focused on democracy and development (and, he hopes, will be useful to municipalities that want to reorganize their processes). On a personal level, he’s also eager to get involved if St. Louisans want to get serious about charter reform or unification. If you’re interested in weighing in on a survey he’s created to gauge public sentiment, he hopes to hear from you. And don’t miss his full conversation on The 314 Podcast, which is now live.