People in Berlin and throughout Germany recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. These commemorations should prompt some reflection closer to home, specifically on the state of local government in the St. Louis area. Doing so raises a fundamental question: If it’s possible for East and West Germany to be reunited, why can’t there be meaningful municipal reorganizations in St. Louis city and county? Whatever barriers we perceive in our community are minuscule in comparison with those that had to be dismantled in Germany.
The Berlin Wall was put up in 1961 and came down 28 years later, in 1989. East and West Germany became separate countries in 1949 and were officially reunited 41 years later, in 1990. The term “Iron Curtain” was coined by Winston Churchill in Fulton, Mo., in 1946. It referred to a barrier that divided Europe from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union 46 years later, in 1991.
The Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall and the border between East and West Germany were all once regarded as permanent. Yet, none even lasted a half century. The barrier between the city and county of St. Louis, on the other hand, has been around since 1876. The last serious attempt to change it occurred in 1962 with the ill-fated “Borough Plan.” That was 52 years ago, a longer time span than the respective existences of the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall and the border within Germany. The two Germanies not only had different currencies, they also had two very different systems of government. One was a Western democracy while the other was a brutal dictatorship. When viewed in this context, whatever perceived barriers exist in the St. Louis region really aren’t that insurmountable.
The biggest obstacles to change exist in the mindsets of St. Louisans. In spite of being the city that launched the Lewis and Clark expedition and funded the trans-Atlantic flight of Charles Lindbergh, St. Louis can often be frustratingly risk-averse. To those St. Louisans who are anxious about changing the status quo I would pose another simple question: Would anyone in his or her right mind design a system from scratch that looked anything like what we have now? A system in which there’s wasteful and inefficient duplication of services between the city and county of St. Louis, between the county and the municipalities within its borders, and among the municipalities themselves? Would any right-minded individual create dozens of municipalities whose very existence depends on issuing traffic tickets; some of which are issued for offenses that might actually threaten public safety and some of which are utterly bogus?
As St. Louis concludes the celebration of its 250th birthday we should not be afraid of change. We need to find a system that works better than the status quo and implement it. Whatever we implement will not be as traumatic as the societal overhaul of East and West Germany. Not only will our region survive the change. We’ll all be better as a result and future generations will thank us.
Tom Schlafly is an attorney in St. Louis.
