Aminhan Lobster’s family has deep roots in St. Louis, and her mother has always had a strong interest in politics—and Lobster suspects those two things have fueled her growing interest in local affairs, too. But the 22-year-old Midtown resident is also concerned for the city’s future: She sees other people her age leaving town.
“As a city, what are we doing to retain these people?” she asks. “And so I’m really interested to see who the next mayor will be, and I really love to ask questions to see kind of where each candidate leans.”
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One thing that Lobster finds herself focused on is a need for more transparency and accountability. The headlines have been bad this winter. A St. Louis city building inspector had ties to three companies earning a collective $2.3 million from programs he supervised. Another building inspector was accused of shaking down daycares—and he said it was at the behest of his boss.
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones called on the FBI to review the department. But she’s defended the St. Louis Development Corporation as it’s faced its own spate of bad press. As the Post-Dispatch has hammered repeatedly, its $37 million American Rescue Plan Act-funded program to shore up businesses in North City has awarded money to at least 27 organizations that are barely operating (or aren’t operating at all). Another nine aren’t in North City.
Residents like Lobster are paying attention. They brought up both departments in focus groups and online comments in response to Nine PBS and SLM’s invitation to help shape the Citizens’ Agenda for the 2025 mayoral race. Says Lobster, “I definitely feel like transparency is lacking at this point.”
People at our focus groups also said that they’re tired of plan after plan, consultant after consultant, with no real progress. And they said they want to see the city do more to garner residents’ input on issues that affect them. Their strong feelings on these issues made transparency and accountability the number one item on the agenda that we brought to mayoral candidates.
The candidates responded to the questions in very different ways. Alderwoman Cara Spencer, resigned from the board of the SLDC in October, saying she believed it was not capable of providing effective oversight with its current structure. She reiterated that in her interview with Nine PBS and SLM and said she would not retain SLDC CEO Neal Richardson if elected.
“It is my observation at this point that SLDC has unfortunately lost the faith and the trust of the community,” she said. “And they’ve lost my faith as well. … It’s really, truly devastating if you’re a business or just a resident in North City and you’ve seen businesses not only struggle, but go out of business, and this once in a lifetime opportunity is quite visibly squandered. That breakdown of trust is something that we will have to work very hard to repair. And it does look like new leadership.”
Recorder of Deeds Michael Butler, who is also running for mayor, took a different view, saying he liked the Economic Justice plan that the mayor and Richardson have been working to execute. “I don’t think that one individual director should be defined by the one negative instance,” he said. “If there are multiple [issues], then when I’m mayor, Neal Richardson will be on the short leash, but I won’t commit to firing Neal on the first day.” He added, “I think there’s still some good that can be done there with … better direction from the mayor’s office.”
In her interview, Mayor Jones suggested that some scandal is always going to be a reality.
“As we saw even with the Board of Aldermen, sometimes there’s nothing we can do,” she said, referring to the scandal that saw three aldermen, including Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, pleading guilty to charges that alleged they’d taken cash from people with business at City Hall.
“But what I can tell citizens is when it hits my desk, I’m going to fix it. We’re going to act. And just like with the Building Division, we fixed that, and now the FBI is investigating to see what other things are going on there. And then also with SLDC, we took a step back, brought in a third-party auditor. That auditor also agreed with us that no funds were expended that shouldn’t have been expended.”
She said the SLDC’s only error was announcing conditional awards before they’d been fully vetted. “So, we have taken the step back,” she said. “We will pause and make the corrective actions that need to be made.”
Businessman Andrew Jones, the lone Republican in the nonpartisan primary, also supports Richardson. He said the key to helping the SLDC succeed is to have a comprehensive economic plan—the key part of his platform. “I believe he’s sincere in trying to help, but I think he’s been giving a short shift, so to speak, because, again, not having a plan, I believe he’s being set up for failure,” he said. “I think the young man will succeed with the right initial programs behind him, with a very comprehensive plan behind him.”
On issues of transparency, Jones stressed the work her administration has done, including hosting quarterly cabinet meetings in the community, aimed at connecting people with department heads who can solve their problems in real time. She said they’re also making changes to the Citizens Service Bureau to make it easier for people to track the complaints they file.
Jones also touted quarterly meetings called LouStat, which are focused on whatever departments have received the most complaints. “We bring all of the city departments together, not in a punitive way, but in a way to ask them what resources they need,” she said. “The budget director is there in case we need to find money to purchase new equipment. The personnel director is there. The Legal Department is there. So, we can have all of those voices at the table to see what the barriers are to making sure that those departments are running as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
Spencer disagrees that the current administration has been transparent. She says that the mayor’s office is “literally locked, whereas under previous administrations, the physical opportunity to engage and enter the mayor’s office was something citizens could do on a daily, regular basis. And to have that physical locking, have that monitoring of the door, really communicates to the public that this is not for you. And I think that is not only just a physical barrier, but it really communicates to the public that we don’t want to hear from you.”
