ST. LOUIS — Megan Green is channeling her inner Peter Parker.
Green, president of the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Board of Alderman, told me she believes “with great power comes great responsibility.â€
That’s a saying the fictional Parker — aka Spider-Man — learned from his uncle. It’s also a common-sense argument for good government that Green is trying to apply in real life.
Witness the debate at the Board of Aldermen last summer over taking guns from children.
Alderman Cara Spencer filed a bill to make it illegal for people without a concealed-carry permit to openly carry guns in the city. The bill drew attacks from the right — Missouri’s elected Republicans would prefer there are no gun laws, ever — and the left, where Alderman Rasheen Aldridge and others worried about the impact on police interactions with young Black men.
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Complicating the situation is that Spencer ran against Mayor Tishaura O. Jones in the last election, and probably will again in the next one.
Green found a path forward. She knew that everybody on the Board of Aldermen — and Jones — wanted to do something about guns in the city, even if it was something small. So she worked with Aldridge on a companion bill that would require more openness and accountability when police interact with members of the community.
Neither bill was going to solve the gun problem or get police officers and residents to sing Kumbaya. But together, the bills overcame a sticky political obstacle and allowed the Board of Aldermen to move forward, adding new powers and responsibility at the same time.
This week, Green plans to apply that same spidey sense to two other bills that are stuck between a political rock and a hard place. Like the gun bills, they are designed to deal with a pervasive public safety problem: dangerous driving in the city.
The bills gained urgency after two Chicago women — Laticha Bracero, 42, and her daughter, Alyssa Cordova, 21 — were killed downtown while leaving a Drake concert. They were walking across Olive Boulevard when a speeding Jeep Cherokee hit them. A 22-year-old man has been charged in their deaths.
One bill, sponsored by Alderman Shane Cohn, would bring red-light cameras back to the city; another, sponsored by Aldridge, would require Board of Aldermen hearings before the police department begins using new forms of surveillance technology. One bill has power; another adds responsibility. They won’t solve the problem. But they might help, while sending a message to the community that the board is listening.
Here’s the holdup: Jones tried last week to short-circuit Green’s approach by issuing with some elements of the technology transparency bill. The bill would require police to report certain details to the Board of Aldermen after adopting new surveillance technology. But the order left out two important elements: public engagement and government oversight.
It was a flip-flop of sorts for Jones, who campaigned in favor of the bill when she was elected. In signing the executive order, Jones was issuing a challenge to Green: Hurry up with the red-light camera bill and drop the bill increasing oversight on surveillance technology.
Green isn’t deterred.
“Oversight is not an attack on police,†Green told me in an interview this week. “It’s checks and balances. The mayor has been in support of this for a long time.â€
The bill is important for Aldridge, who, like many current office-holders in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region, owes his political career to the Ferguson uprising a decade ago.
“We’re coming up on 10 years after Ferguson and there is still a lot of mistrust of police,†Aldridge says. “There is no transparency in the department. The community has been working on this for a long time.â€
Jones’ executive order exposed a rift between the mayor’s office and Green — who are generally aligned on most issues. Increasingly, Green says, the mayor’s office is making it harder for the Board of Aldermen to perform its oversight function by not making people like Police Chief Robert Tracy available for hearings.
“We’re getting to a place where we can’t do our jobs because the administration directs people to not come meet with us,†Green says. “We’re at a loss. We’ve got to be able to do our jobs.â€
This week, the Board of Aldermen will decide which approach to endorse. Will there be power and responsibility? Or one without the other?
“This is not about stopping technology,†Green says. “We have to have checks and balances.â€