Alan Hoffman is the Plaintiff and Attorney Mark Pedroli drafted the Petition. This was excellent work by Alan and Mark for making and documenting the information requests and now for pursuing this in court.
If airport privatization were not such a terrible deal for taxpayers, the City wouldn't be working so hard to keep so much of this information secret.
Tonight (October 29, 2019), I traveled to the Carpenter Branch Library in South St. Louis to attend an event known as the “Airport Outreach Meeting by Fly314 Privatization Consultants.” I prefer to think of this group as the “Acolytes of Ayn Rand," people who think that private for-profit is always superior to government. I spoke up several times tonight. Some of my comments can be heard on the attached video and other comments will be on KWMU Radio tomorrow.
My overriding fear is that when the "Working Group" actually comes up with a detailed proposal, its allies in the Board of Aldermen will declare an emergency session and force a vote before anyone has a chance to read and absorb the legislation. This is standard operating procedure in many publicly unpopular cases like this, where the citizens have nothing to gain. Hence, my cross-examination of the consultants, which you can hear on the attached two-minute recording, along with the non-answers. When I pressed them for assurances that the Board Members would have ample time to discuss the ultimate detailed piece of legislation with their constituents before any vote, one presenter stated that my question was “unfair.”
On this recording (which I made on my iPhone) you’ll first hear the claim that the group has been “transparent.” We heard that claim a lot tonight. Next, you’ll hear another presenter telling the citizens that they should RIGHT NOW be speaking to their representative on the Board of Aldermen about the airport deal. Never mind that there isn’t yet any deal and never mind that members of the Board of Aldermen do not have any meaningful information to discuss with their constituents.
Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi discuss many of the ways in which "the news" has changed for the worse over the past few decades. This is the type of discussion you don't see on most news outlets--news media fail to cover problems with news media.
Today I had the privilege of attending an informational meeting regarding the CLEAN MISSOURI ballot initiative. The organization will be finished collecting signatures in a few weeks, and is on target to having the initiative on the Missouri statewide ballot this coming November. Who could possibly be against a Ballot Proposition that will read exactly like this:
Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
● change process and criteria for redrawing state legislative districts during
reapportionment;
● change limits on campaign contributions that candidates for state legislature can
accept from individuals or entities;
● establish a limit on gifts that state legislators, and their employees, can accept from
paid lobbyists;
● prohibit state legislators, and their employees, from serving as paid lobbyists for a
period of time;
● prohibit political fundraising by candidates for or members of the state legislature on
State property; and
● require legislative records and proceedings to be open to the public?
State governmental entities estimate annual operating costs may increase by
$189,000. Local governmental entities report no fiscal impact.
Here is the Policy Summary.
Here is the actual text being proposed for the Missouri Constitution.
Here is the website for Clean Missouri.
If you would like to get involved in this effort, contact Campaign Director Sean Soendker Nicholson at sean@cleanmissouri.org.
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