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St. Louis County Council takes its fight against Stenger to court

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jo Mannies
Published October 3, 2017 at 9:53 PM CDT
St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger (second from left) argues with Councilman Sam Page during a meeting of the St. Louis County Council on Tuesday. Page sponsored a bill halting construction at the site of an ice center.
Jason Rosenbaum | St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger (second from left) argues with Councilman Sam Page during a meeting of the St. Louis County Council on Tuesday. Page sponsored a bill halting construction at the site of an ice center.

The St. Louis County Council is preparing to go to court to determineifit has the power to hire county employees over the objection of County Executive Steve Stenger.

But first, a judge will have to decide who pays the council’s lawyers.

“The county is not going to be paying for an attorney to sue itself,” Stenger said in an interview. “So I don’t know how the council plans on paying for that. But the council has no charter authority to appropriate money in that regard for such a payment.

On Wednesday,  County Counselor Peter Krane sent a letter to the council's prospective lawyers advising them that "the Council has no authority to enter into contracts and no payment authority."

The council voted 4-3 at Tuesday’s meeting to set up the legal fight.  At issue is the Democratic chief executive’s refusal to hire more staff for county Auditor Mark Tucker.

The council hired Tucker in the spring. Stenger sayshe’s unqualifiedand has pushed to have him replaced.

Council chairman Sam Page, who’s also a Democrat, supports Tucker. 

Page says a court battle is justified, in order to determinethe broader issue of the council’s power.

“This is an important issue for everybody and it’s time for us to go court and try to get this decided.”

Stengerhas been at oddswith Page and several other Democrats over various issues in recent months.  As a result, Page has become more influential — because a majority of the seven-member council now often side with him.

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Missouri News
Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
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