Carpenters Union, City NAACP Press to Revive Lambert Privatization Idea
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ST. LOUIS — Leaders of the Carpenters union and the St. Louis NAACP on Monday urged Mayor Lyda Krewson to revive a plan to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport and announced other steps to try to keep the idea alive.
They said they were submitting an open records request for all documents received or produced by a city committee that had been studying Lambert privatization until Krewson last month effectively ended the process.
They also called on would-be bidders for an airport lease to turn in their proposals anyway even if the mayor doesn’t restart the formal process. The public deserves to know what’s possible, they said.
“There were 18 (teams of) companies from around the world that wanted to pursue this opportunity,” Al Bond, executive secretary-treasurer of the St. Louis-Kansas City Carpenters Regional Council, said at a news conference at council offices on Hampton Avenue. “We want just simply to see the plans.”
Bond and Adolphus Pruitt, president of the city NAACP chapter, said leasing the airport is the only way to generate enough of a revenue stream to significantly improve Lambert and to address other needs of city residents without a tax increase.
“We have to kick it up a notch in St. Louis and our region,” Bond said, noting that Kansas City plans to build a new terminal at its airport. “We’re just getting our ass kicked, to be frank with you.”
Pruitt repeated his position that leasing Lambert could provide millions of dollars in extra revenue to help impoverished north St. Louis neighborhoods.
Krewson’s spokesman, Jacob Long, said Monday that the mayor still intends to end the process at the next meeting of the city’s Board of Estimate and Apportionment.
“She made her decision after listening to … residents, elected officials and the business community,” Long said. “We still just don’t believe there’s overwhelming support for that process.”
As for information compiled by the privatization committee, Long said the city already intended to release “as much of it as possible.”
He said the city counselor’s office is reviewing the material to determine what can be released and what should be kept private for legal reasons.
Bond said it’s possible that he and Pruitt would try to get city aldermen to do something to try to influence Krewson to start the privatization consideration process again. Bond didn’t offer specifics, saying “we haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“I did speak with the mayor,” he added. “I believe she’d like to see this happen. She was pressured by a few business people and, I guess, some other people.”
The Post-Dispatch reported that representatives of Civic Progress and the Regional Business Council, as well as other business leaders, privately met with Krewson and other elected officials in an effort to slow the privatization.
Pruitt also suggested the possibility of an initiative petition drive by backers of the lease idea to try to show public support for the idea.
Bond and Pruitt also said they opposed a newly announced move by some suburban officials to seek voter approval of sales tax increases in St. Louis County and other outlying areas to raise money to buy Lambert from the city and transfer it to a regional authority.
Pruitt pointed out that sales taxes especially impact lower-income residents.
Bond said “a public-private partnership” via leasing Lambert to private operators would generate enough money to improve the airport without a tax hike. He added that the extra revenue might even allow the city to repeal its earnings tax.
The Carpenters union strongly endorsed the privatization effort on Dec. 17, saying “no project could mean more to our region.”
The union’s political arm in July 2018 received a $150,000 check from Great St. Louis Inc., a nonprofit affiliated with megadonor Rex Sinquefield, who funded the privatization study.
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Mark Schlinkmann is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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