RiteOn Blog

CITY OF ST PETERS, MISSOURI FIASCO

COMMENTARY:

Adolphus Busch and many of his friends should be considered heroes for trying to protect the City of St Peters taxpayer community from the folly of some of its elected leaders. Busch and others have, on numerous occasions in the past, at considerable expense to themselves, warned the City regarding the lack of merit of the Premier 370 (Lakeside) project. Mayor Pagano, according to a recent Journal letter from Mr Busch, sought to seek 41 million dollars from Great Rivers and the County, apparently to bail the City out of “questionable” policies perpetuated by St Peters officials and their advisors, past and present!

Mayor Pagano and his allies on the Board of Aldermen have, according to the Busch letter, voted to deny their citizens participation in the traditional August tax holiday, giving as a reason the City’s heavy legal expenses in defending the Premier 370 lawsuit. In this case the City has been reversed by a Kansas City judge and, according to Mayor Pagano, has spent $300,000 of taxpayer money on that! Further significant legal expense has been incurred as a result of a guilty verdict and a million dollar plus award to a citizen in an unrelated matter. It would appear that hard-earned taxpayer money is literally flying out of the City treasury at breakneck speed. It looks, at this point, like millions more is slated to go down the tubes.

Taxpayers should be outraged and should demand accountability. With this sort of political leadership both elected and appointed in St Peters, it looks like the “lawyers full employment act” is in full swing and the Missouri Sunshine Laws have been buried! Mayor Pagano and his “buddies” are obviously “in” over their heads.

Click on the link below for excerpts from the Adolphus Busch letter to the Journal and links to the complete articles :

MO HOUSE BILL TO REFORM JUDICIARY IS DEFEATED

The MO House of Representatives took up HJR 49, a bill that would have allowed elected representatives to choose Supreme Court Judges instead of, as is now the procedure, “secret selection” by a panel of lawyers. Predictably, the Bill to move the selection out into the open where voters could decide by communication with their elected representatives, which judges they wanted, was defeated. By defeat of this Bill, lawyers maintain their control of Supreme Court judicial appointments. The vote on this Bill is included at the end of the message. You can see who voted against passage of the Bill and therefore who supports lawyer control of these critical judicial appointments.

Liberal trial attorneys and the NEA, both oppose this Bill. (and they won!)
HJR 49, if it had passed, would have allowed more “strict constructionist” judges to be appointed to the Court and would have lessened the practice of appointing liberal judges who are inclined to legislate from the bench. As the result, 17 of the last 18 nominees to the Supreme Court have been Democrats.  In turn, the Supreme Court of Missouri has been issuing increasingly activist rulings.

If you are interested in this subject, here’s a web site that will give you more information:
http://www.newmoplan.com/

PROPERTY TAXES ARE TOO HIGH!

In response to our announced plans to initiate a citizens tax revolt, we received the following message from Rep. Cynthia Davis. She represents District 19 in St Charles County, Missouri and, at our request, has graciously given us permission to publish her response... Ed
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Chuck,

I filed a bill nearly identical to California's Prop 13.  It was going to freeze real estate taxes.   After additional input, I made a substitute for my bill, HJR42 that also included a spending limit on local governments as well as doing away with reassessments altogether.  My bill also rolled back the assessment to whatever the land was valued at in 2005.  Local growth, improvements and inflation could be added to the value. 

The Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (Mike.Sutherland of Warrenton) is not taking a vote on my bill.  I also could not get the policy development committee to support this as a Republican Caucus position.  While this is a bill that would never get any Democrat support, I am really disappointed that I cannot seem to get the Republicans to move this to the floor.

John Sonderegger interviewed me and Scott Rupp (State Senator, MO District 2) on his show a couple of weeks ago. He asked Scott if he thought my bill had any chance of passing.  Scott* said "No.”  If the Legislature cannot get real estate tax relief on the ballot, the people can do it through the initiative petition process.

Would you like me to get you in touch with a list of people who may be interested in this issue?  It takes a lot more work for the citizens to get it on the ballot, but after my bitter experience with the legislators, this is probably the only way it will happen.

Cynthia *
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*In conversing with Mrs Davis for this article, we arrived at the distinct impression that Senator Rupp was against the introduction and/or passage of her proposed real estate tax relief. In the interest of disclosure concerning our research for this article, we have not interviewed Sen. Rupp. Then again, according to Rep. Davis, Republican leadership has refused to allow a vote on her Bill.
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ADDITIONAL EDITORIAL COMMENTARY:
RITEON WILL SHORTLY LAUNCH A TAX REVOLT INITIATIVE. IT IS IN THE FINAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT - SO WATCH FOR IT SOON!

Along with many, we thought that Republicans were the Party interested in lowering taxes. Many voters seem to believe that the label “Republican” means someone who favors lower taxes. As we can easily see, that doesn’t apply to the majority of Republicans in the State Legislature. If it did, they’d be eager to pass Rep. Davis’ tax relief proposals. We know Democrats will raise taxes so how does the besieged property owner obtain tax relief? The last paragraph of Mrs Davis’ message tells us what we must do!

With this in mind, it pays to recognize that lower, more tolerable property taxes that don’t drive people out of their neighborhoods and that citizens can live with, don’t exactly interest politicians whose election campaigns are supported by big money interests and large corporate developers!

MORE ON ST. PETERS AUDIT

Following up on the St Peters Audit, here are some excerpts from Rick Fischer, posted today on his blog site. Click here to go to the site:

http://rfischer-outsider.blogspot.com/2008/01/st-peters-is-dirty-city-part-1.html

Once again, we urge those who are interested in good government to go to Rick’s site and read his comments.
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(Excerpts...)

Appraisals not done:
The city is involved in a project known as Lakeside 370. As part of this project the city purchased 1552 acres of land, however, the city only obtained a formal independent appraisal on 249. 4 acres (or 16 % of the land purchased.) The audit states that "good business practices requires" an appraisal to ensure a reasonable price is paid. Montee failed to offer any evidence as to what was a reasonable price for the property.

Purchase from former Mayor Tom Brown's son-in-law:
As I reported yesterday, Montee noted that land was purchased from "a related party" which turned out to be Brown's son-in-law who received almost 3 times per acre what the other sellers received. The city did not obtain an appraisal to support the purchase price on this land. The Government Accounting Standards (GAS) under which Montee operates consider such a transaction "abuse."...

... I will finish the rest of my review in Part 2 in which I will point out other problems noted in the audit, violations of the law Montee failed to mention and misrepresentations by the city in an attempt to mislead its residents. When reviewing the audit one should also consider that former Mayor Tom Brown was not only guilty of "abuse" regarding the land sale but Montee completely failed to mention that Brown and the city were found to have unjustly interfered with a local business because the owner dared to speak out against Brown and the city. This could end up costing the residents over a million dollars. Couple this with the fact that Tom Brown's successor, Shawn Brown, is in federal prison for bribery and you get a picture that St. Peters is not a clean city but instead it is one of the dirtier cities in the region. Based upon the facts, I challenge anyone to claim St. Peters is a clean city. And I haven't even gotten to the rest of the audit yet.

Susan Montee's audit of St. Peters should be investigated

Excerpt...
"The St. Peters audit is in and if you listen to what Montee had to say, rather than what she wrote, you might think St. Peters is the standard by which other cities should be measured. If that is the case we should all throw in the towel. Of course, based on Montee's comments, St. Peters issued a press release which claims nothing wrong was found in the audit. To make matters worse the media picked up on this theme and reported Montee found St. Peters was clean..."

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The above is a paragraph from Rick Fischer's blog site where he comments on the St. Peters Audit. We urge you to click on the following link and read the full text of the commentary:

http://rfischer-outsider.blogspot.com/

MORE AND HIGHER TAXES?

Rick Fischer and Lyn Schipper comment on issues...

... facing the City of O'Fallon and more briefly, St Charles County and Wentzville. They lay out some of the reasons why residential taxes are skyrocketing. If you are a residential taxpayer living in St Charles County, Missouri (Maybe the same things are going on in Lincoln County or your area if you aren't!) it's well worth your time to listen to this sound clip and hear what these well informed people have to say. Due to technical difficulties, we did not enclose the clip in this message but you can hear it at:

http://www.ofallonwatchdog.org(Click on the link located on the Watchdog site)

If you are a Republican or a fiscal conservative, it might be important to ask yourself why the Republican Party in St Charles County supports politicians who RAISE taxes, support poor planning and are creating mountains of DEBT. We thought the Republican Party stood for fiscal responsibility, responsible community planning and an improving lifestyle. St. Charles County, Missouri votes overwhelmingly for Republicans and, in spite of this, there are unmistakable signs that big trouble is brewing with higher taxes and extremely burdensome debt loads.

There IS a Republican Club in St. Charles County that DOES stand for fiscal responsibility and TRADITIONAL Republican values. It was formed because the present Republican Party leadership in the County demonstrates time and again that it does not. If you are concerned about higher taxes and more responsive and responsible government,you might take a look at the St. Charles County Republican Club's web site web site at:
http://www.stcharlescountyrepublicanclub.com... Lyn Schipper is President of the Club.
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. Chuck

HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Apparently, the Chairman of the St. Charles County Central Committee wants to continue drawing attention to the leadership vacuum that exists on that Committee.  We refer to the laborious list of excuses he made in a recent O’Fallon Watchdog commentary in response to O’Fallon businessman Joe Cronin’s observations about the 16th Legislative nomination “debacle.” His reply to Cronin in O'Fallon Watchdog illustrates this.

Our main point here is to point out how far from free and democratic the process was that nominated a Republican candidate to succeed departing State Representative Carl Bearden (District 16) in a February special election. As Tony Brockmeyer (Ist Capitol News) so appropriately phrased it in a recent commentary, the Party leadership insists on pursuing "...special interest politics..." and "...the politics of personal destruction..." Our view is that there’s a pattern of practice here.

In September, Central Committee members eligible to vote in that District were summoned to a nominating meeting.  In what has become business as usual, the “word” prior to that meeting indicated the Party choice was Mark Parkinson, a former Bond staffer, with the clear inference that everyone should vote accordingly. This ignored the fact that Ray Stone, also a viable candidate with considerable political experience and professional credentials, was running.  Despite continuing strong direction from the Committee “leadership” in favor of Parkinson, the vote was close and Parkinson emerged with a narrow victory.  Some voting members, including at least one Parkinson supporter, were outraged at the Party / Committee leadership’s display of favoritism.

TIMELY QUOTES

With local elections fast approaching we feel that it is "timely" to forward a couple of quotes. We hope that you will take the time out of your busy day to cast your vote and that, as you do, you will have these thoughts in mind and will take a moment to reflect on America's founding principles.
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"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." ---Thomas Jefferson
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"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise."
---Mark Twain
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Gem of the week:
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well

TAKING AWAY THE RIGHT OF SELF DEFENSE

This concerns the NRA's lawsuit about the confiscation of guns from law abiding citizens in New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  

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City of New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin Once Again Found in Contempt of Court District Court Judge to City Attorney: Conduct "wholly unprofessional"

Fairfax, VA-The National Rifle Association (NRA) and law abiding gun owners have won yet another victory this morning against New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and former police chief Warren Riley.... (read on)

WILL MISSOURIANS GET A NEW CASTLE LAW THIS YEAR?

A committee of the Missouri House debated House Bill 189 yesterday. According to an Article published in the Kansas City Star (last year) one aspect of last year's debate highlighted "... the (homeowner's) right to stop an intruder (from) breaking into their home without having to determine whether the intruder intended to harm them."

Hooray for the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Marilyn Ruestman of Joplin. A St Charles County legislator co-sponsoring HB 189 is Rep. Cynthia Davis (R-19th). In addition, Rep. Davis strongly supports similar legislation, HB 60. Rep. Tom Dempsey (R-18th) also supports Castle Law legislation and voted for the bill last year. Rep Davis indicates she will speak in support of Castle Law legislation on the floor of the House, when appropriate.

It was puzzling to this writer to read that last year ... (more)