into the final flickers of the ’net flick
[Update: Alas, the show must go on.]
In our story’s previous installment, Ald. Cara Spencer threw an audible albeit off-camera temper tantrum in City Hall’s Kennedy Room after, finally, she had nowhere to hide from and no means to deflect from the truth: Spencer’s bill to require a public vote on whether to privatize Lambert Airport is fatally-flawed.
And that’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is that Ald. Joe Vaccaro, himself a vocal opponent of Lambert privatization, urged roughly a year ago that the Board of Aldermen pass a charter amendment that would ensure a binding public vote. Spencer refused to join Vaccaro in this effort, and chose instead to promote her ordinance proposal despite repeated warnings that her ordinance proposal is fatally-flawed.
And the whole truth, thankfully for ordinary citizens who wish to have a binding vote on whether to privatize Lambert, is that there is still time for Vaccaro’s proposed charter amendment to be passed by the Board of Aldermen and submitted to the voters for approval. There are at least 14 months left in the “process” of deciding whether to privatize Lambert Airport. Passing a proposed charter amendment out of the Board of Aldermen and having it put on the ballot in November or April is well within the realm of possibility. (Moreover, what alderman would be so politically foolish as to actively oppose a binding public vote? And it should be noted that every major candidate in the President of the Board of Aldermen election, including the victor, pledged to support a binding public vote.)
It’s this confrontation by the whole truth that likely caused Spencer’s temper tantrum in City Hall. And when finally cornered by the whole truth, Spencer nevertheless decided to double-down and purposely mislead her Facebook followers. First, and very likely for its sensational effect, there was Spencer’s publishing on Facebook of an egregiously-out-of-context quote of City Counselor Julian Bush’s testimony. Then Spencer passed along to her Facebook followers the latest weekly diatribe by Ray Hartmann (who, it should be noted, has a less-than-arms-length relationship with Spencer’s political patrons Vince Schoemehl & Joan Bray). Hartmann’s meandering diatribe does land some shots on some political players who certainly deserve it, but it also regurgitates the same bullshit that Spencer told the Post-Dispatch’s Mark Schlinkmann about there not being enough time to proceed with a charter amendment. The truth is that there is still time. The truth is that there are at least 14 months.
But let’s accept Spencer’s and Hartmann’s bullshit about there not being enough time to proceed with a charter amendment, because acceptance of their bullshit gives rise to some interesting questions. Spencer herself acknowledged to the Post-Dispatch that the efficacy of her proposed public vote ordinance is “legally unclear.” When did Spencer know this about her proposed ordinance? Who drafted Spencer’s fatally-flawed ordinance proposal and who gave it to Spencer? Why did Spencer decide roughly one year ago not to back Vaccaro’s ironclad charter amendment proposal? Was Spencer counseled to nevertheless proceed with her fatally-flawed ordinance proposal? If so, who counseled Spencer to proceed with her fatally-flawed ordinance proposal? In other words, who has been operating the projector behind the curtain?
Even if the drive to privatize Lambert eventually collapses under its own weight (which I’ve long-believed that it eventually will), these questions are worth answering. It’s this town’s worst-kept political secret that Spencer and her two political patrons have preliminary designs to run Spencer for mayor. No doubt, Schoemehl & Bray are emboldened by the ease with which another Schoemehl-backed Citywide candidate, Ald. Megan Green, recently rode her whiteness to inroads with voters in the City’s Central Corridor and Southwest Quadrant. Spencer, whose brand is much less “radical” and much more business-friendly than that of Green’s, could ride her whiteness even further than Green did. And so the nature of Spencer’s involvement in L’Affaire Lambert raises serious questions about Spencer the potential candidate for mayor … not just questions about Spencer’s judgment, temperament and fundamental honesty, but also questions about whose hands really are on the steering wheel.
