Reform or revolution - whatever works.

Judd, Dennis R.

The general outlines of St. Louis's political culture are easy to describe. On the one hand, it is saddled by an unreformed, fragmented machine-style governmental structure that seems explicitly designed to dissipate political energies. On the other, it has long had a southern-style civic leadership centered in a downtown corporate elite. To have any realistic chance to revitalize its downtown, the power structure of St. Louis must undergo two seemingly opposite changes. Somehow a strong public leadership must emerge out of the many contending governmental fiefdoms, but at the same time civic leadership must open up to allow many new groups and voices to gather at the political table.

The idea that fundamental reforms may bring an end to fragmented governments is about deed. Too many politicians benefit from the ward system in St. Louis to allow it to be changed. Even more modest reforms that might replace the weak mayor form and the Board of Apportionment and Estimate have been suggested, and they've gone nowhere. A few years ago a Board of Electors recommended a consolidation of governments in St. Louis County, but that foundered, just as had all previous attempts at metropolitan reform in the St. Louis area.

Nevertheless, political change is in the wind in St. Louis and in the region. It is likely to be more evolutionary than revolutionary, but if it happens, it will come through such citizen-based organizations as FOCUS St. Louis and Metropolis St. Louis. Both are positioned to help change politics in St. Louis, though gradually and modestly.

FOCUS, with more than 1,200 members, came into being as the result of a merger in 1996 between Confluence St. Louis and the Leadership Center of Greater St. Louis. Confluence was officially organized in 1983, though its roots go back somewhat farther. In 1974 the Danforth Foundation commissioned studies to assess the feasibility of starting a regional citizens' organization. The idea kept percolating until it bubbled up again in the early 1980s, when the RCGA asked researchers at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Saint Louis University to make proposals about how to facilitate regional decision-making. When Civic Progress, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat weighed in favorably and the Danforth Foundation followed with funding, Confluence was born.

From the beginning, Confluence was infused with a classic reform ideology, with the purpose of engaging with governmental and civic leaders and improving public policy. Gradual improvement, not protest, was the order of the day. Virtually all of the original 100 members were political or community activists, or people who dabbled in politics from time to time. Throughout its history Confluence fit a distinctly upper-middle class profile. Among the 16 projects it undertook from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s are such policy issues as solid-waste disposal, health care for the indigent, the distribution of sales tax among municipalities, local governmental structure, racial polarization, low-income housing and youth crime. To implement its preferred policies, Confluence sometimes recommended new legislation, but just as often it worked with established leadership structures, including Civic Progress, to obtain political and financial backing for particular initiatives.

Leadership St. Louis was an important Danforth-sponsored initiative that preceded Confluence and, in fact, ultimately provided much of Confluence's initial membership. It is said that Leadership St. Louis began as a result of a visit to Atlanta in 1975 by RCGA's first executive director, Harry Morley (now of Taylor-Morley Homes). At the time Atlanta had a leadership training program that helped establish lines of communication across racial lines in that divided city. At the urging of some civic leaders, in 1976 the Danforth Foundation founded and initially ran Leadership St. Louis, although Leadership became a 501 (c)(3) organization by the mid-1980s, Danforth continued to pick up the tab into the 1990s, when it gradually fazed out its support. About five years ago Leadership became self-supporting, in part by charging a $2,500 tuition.

Leadership St. Louis sponsors a nine-month program that (in the words of a FOCUS pamphlet), "includes opportunities to enhance self-awareness of leadership approaches and on-site visits and interactions with decision makers to inspire participants to address community challenges." The list of more than 1,300 graduates reads like a Who's Who of political and community activists and opinion leaders in the St. Louis region, though top corporate leaders, who presumably need no leadership training, are not much represented. Some of the more notable graduates include Karen Fuss, Debra Patterson (who runs the Monsanto Fund), Dee Joyner, Denny Coleman, St. Louis Police Chief Ronald Henderson and Mayor Clarence Harmon.

Leadership St. Louis was always an elite organization. It recruited people who already held leadership positions in the region. It was hoped that its seminars would foster friendships and informal networking among its graduates. In this way, governmental fragmentation and interjurisdictional rivalries might be partially overcome. According to a Leadership graduate, the program indeed works as intended: "When I get a request from someone in my class, I don't say no."

When FOCUS was created in 1996, it was able to hire a program manager and two support staff, but that has quickly grown to nine full-time professionals, six consultants and a couple of support staff with a revolving group of interns. FOCUS appears to have gained legitimacy with the St. Louis establishment, Since Danforth funding ended in 1995, it has been successful in obtaining support from a variety of corporations, foundations and other organizations.

Two years ago FOCUS was invited by Mayor Harmon to study and make recommendations for a reorganization of the city's development agencies. The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District has invited FOCUS to study its recent proposals for administrative reform. Do these kinds of activities mean that FOCUS is being co-opted by the powers that be? Not according to staff members. They stress that FOCUS is process-oriented; that what they are trying to do is to institutionalize citizen engagement in public issues. As evidence they cite their work in organizing the citizen forums connected to the Downtown Now Plan. FOCUS also organized and ran the community outreach activities for 2004.

There is a tension in FOCUS's self-definition that cannot be easily resolved, however. As its work on the reorganization of St. Louis's development agencies demonstrates, when it is called upon to "study" policy issues, it also must inevitably offer advice. To be invited back, it must respect political understandings and established ways of doing things. But it must also take sides, as it did when it recommended that the city's development agencies be reorganized so that more money could be freed from control by individual aldermen.

What can reasonably be expected of an organization like FOCUS? It will presumably help bring about and introduce efficiencies into some bureaucratic agencies like the Metropolitan Sewer District. It will be able to organize citizen involvement in major undertakings without appearing to have its own axe to grind. It may, to some degree and on some issues, help to cut through some political rivalries and antagonisms.

But the St. Louis region also needs more fundamental reforms. Since Percy Green ceased being an activist sometime in the 1980s, St. Louis has lacked the kind of rebellious spirit that Thomas Jefferson thought to be important as a constant source of renewal in the Republic.

Credible anti-establishment organizations are missing from the St. Louis political scene. The only plausible candidate for that role is Metropolis, but it does not represent or articulate a coherent agenda, nor is it likely to in the future. Having said that, it nevertheless may become a catalyst for gradually opening up St. Louis's politics. Failing that, at least the young people in Metropolis will have some fun to show for it.

Metropolis began life as an e-mail listserve, a "virtual" organization (so '90s!), but before long people started to meet and talk about issues. From there Metropolis evolved into a social organization for 20-somethings, many of them students, who wanted to live in a city with a vibrant downtown culture. A person close to the organization described its members as having no mortgages or children; it is therefore understandable that it is more oriented to social activities than to politics, sponsoring pub walks and informal gatherings. These still go on, especially on Friday and Saturday nights in the Washington Avenue area. Metropolis members organized the event last year in which the last Seinfeld episode was projected onto the side of a downtown building.

Once again, the Danforth Foundation has played a pivotal role. Metropolis ceased being a virtual organization about two years ago when Danforth offered funds for leadership training to members of the group. Metropolis now has one part-time staff position, basically to administer the Danforth grant. It is almost completely decentralized; anyone who has an idea can start to run with it with virtually no overview, as long as they can get some other members interested. The issues, however, are confined to downtown revitalization. Metropolis may end playing a meaningful role in the cause for downtown through their input into the Downtown Now! plan, and simply because its members constitute a main constituency for loft living.

Some people may view Metropolis as an anti-establishment group. But it isn't nearly well enough organized for that. Even if it were, its young people are likely to be more interested in making contacts that can be used to grease the path to professional advancement than in making waves. If it begins to build an organization structure in the next few years, a struggle may well break out over Metropolis's future. With FOCUS occupying the regional reform niche, it is likely that Metropolis will remain focused on the downtown.

I mean no criticism with the observation that FOCUS and Metropolis are not exactly pushing the envelope for fundamental reform, which would involve such causes as governmental reorganization in the city and the region.

Neither are these groups trying to unseat or even to modify the power held by Civic Progress and the civic leadership. Still, St. Louis needs reform; the region needs to build a culture of cooperation, and it's all to the good that citizen-based organizations have evolved to push these agendas.

Dennis Judd is professor of political science at University of Missouri St. Louis.