Metro Madness in Metro V. CCC

[Kuumba]

By Kuumba Chi Nia

March Madness brings out the best of collegiate baseball talent in the St. Louis metro area. The City of St. Louis brings spring in with a fling of fans coming to town to witness some the most historic basketball team playing. This is an opportunity for recruiters to scout out the talent and for the talent to shine. But absent from Midwest regional sport broadcasting and ESPN is the post season game highlights of Metro v. CCC.
The transit agency lost hands down last year in case against the Cross County Collaborate and the agency coughed up millions of dollars. In the lead up to this tournament of madness, Metro found itself sucking up to legal firms like a coach to a scout and big time professional sporting team.
Metro agency is public funded agency that was under fiduciary crisis. The agency paid mightily for a build up to a case that ultimately embarrassed the agency and wasted taxpayers’ monies. The agency released information to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch March 16 illustrating how they spent the taxpayers’ money on a frivolous law-suit.
In some cases the agency spent $1 million per month. Metro really dished out the dough to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton in the tune of $30,000 for lodging for one law firm.
Metro at least come some of the money in St. Louis County and the city. According to the Post “Rabbitt, Pitzer & Snodgrass, billed Metro for nearly $5.3 million in fees and expense. Also, former Missouri Appellate Judge James R. Dowd and his firms billed Metro $307,942.”
The Metro Board of Commissioners and former CEO, Larry E. Salci managed to allow the home team to hemorrhage funds at time when services to transit lines, both road and light rail were needing upgrading. The agency needed and remains needing to install toilets. I ride the transit system and rode it for years and one of the obvious contradictions was no restrooms. The made the obvious relieving spot elevators. PU!
There is a restroom at the Illinois end of the line with an eatery. In a positive note the agency now offers free rides for seniors in Illinois. Free seniors rides would a good thing to see that in Missouri.
Legal defense work is time consuming and one builds up an appetite easily while burning the midnight oil. But the legal representatives really are ferocious eaters. Lunches for Metro’s legal team cost as much as $250 apiece at “the Art of Entertaining, Gourmet to Go, McAlister’s Deli and Joe Boccardi’s Catering,” reported the Post.
The legal team really raked in the taxpayers’ money eating well, but we did not get anything in return.
In a world wind affair of travels, Metro lawyers fly to 18 U.S. cities scouting for eyewitnesses who earned $7.8 million to lose the case. Hill International in Marlton, N.J.; the Challenge Group of St. Peters, and St. Louis firm Anders Minkler and Diehl for accounting those three expert witnesses were suppose to bring the case home for Metro. NOT!
But the Metro team figured the only way to bring home the trophy to the agency was to spend the very money it had borrowed to fund the extension of the line from Forest Park to Shrewsbury, and money that could have gone to retiring bonds are putting in the pension funds for the employees. But noooo, this was the big game, this was Metro madness as event in “July 2006, a Hill senior vice president, James Palmer, spent three nights at San Francisco’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel in a room that cost $624, a night, according to Metro records,” the Post continued. You have to give the agency credit for providing the documentation. Speaking of documentation, Susan Montee, Missouri State Auditor, is pursuing an audit of the agency. Metro was able to block her and former auditor Claire McCaskill with the “Papa Bear” of cost overruns and we know now it was the long trial in St. Louis County history. Now to make matters worst.
Metro pushed for Proposition M for 2008 ballot consideration. The county residents blocked that. Metro has been crying and warning the possible service cuts will occur and they would occur in North County and the North side. They extended services to southern Missouri in the rural areas where it’s mostly white folk help the rider ship and provided a good enough service to an area that needs it, but the bulk of the tax dollars come from St. Louis and the county. The purposed cuts will put a dint in the predominately black folk neighborhoods. The recently passed Proposition S already increases tax dollars for Metro agency to more than 7 per cent.
So Metro and Metro supporters don’t think about putting another tax burden on us, especially while the audit is going on. Prop M would also increase what we pay in the city and we don’t need that. We need that as much as we need the hole in the ground Ball park Village. We need them to waste more money like we need their Congestion M campaign that is doing nothing to help with traffic flow as a result of I-64 construction.

So who is to pick up the tap and why? Can Metro pay off the bonds? Was Robert Baer the best coach for the team at this time? What are big leaguers on Wall Street saying about this public agency? Did all these expenses and more make the agency and services better across the board? What will Montee find?
There are too many question as of yet that are not resolved. I say hold off of Metro for now, and don’t give them a pass to spend any more money, block any draft attempts and watch out for whose scouting who.