Truth teller
Les Sterman
Les Sterman is one of St. Louis’ most capable regional leaders. He also may be the most influential person in the area you’ve never heard of.
Hundreds of politicians have come and gone over the last 26 years. But throughout, Mr. Sterman has been at the center of every serious effort to knit together the St. Louis region — economically, socially, governmentally and with roads and transit.
For more than a quarter of a century, he has been executive director of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the area’s regional planning council. In 1962, the federal government required metropolitan areas to create such councils to consider metro-wide transportation needs.
The St. Louis council is compromised of the elected leaders of Franklin, Jefferson, St. Charles and St. Louis counties and the city of St. Louis in Missouri, and Madison, Monroe and St. Clair Counties in Illinois. With advice from a professional staff led by Mr. Sterman, the council has divvied up billions of dollars in federal money within the region — mainly in transportation and homeland security. It has provided planning on a wide range of regional issues, such as tax policy, economic development, public safety and street beautification.
Mr. Sterman, who was 34 when he became executive director in 1983, is stepping down this month to lead another major regional project — rebuilding the Metro East’s dangerously decrepit Mississippi River levee system.
Robert J. Baer, former UniGroup chairman and currently president of Metro, the regional transit agency, has followed Mr. Sterman’s career from the beginning. He said Mr. Sterman doesn’t just “sincerely care about St. Louis’ progress,” but he also is “an outstanding public servant” because “he is knowledgeable, principled and, above all, candid.”
That gets to the heart of it. Mr. Sterman speaks candidly, a quality that is not always appreciated by the politicians with whom he works.
He has been a strong ally of well-planned projects that serve the public interest. He was a principal backer of the most successful aspects of the original MetroLink light rail system, but he sounded early warnings about the problems that beset its expansion.
He’s also been the bane of politicians and business groups who ballyhoo bad ideas. When the Wall Street crowd tried to privatize the new Mississippi River Bridge so that they could fill their pockets with toll receipts, Mr. Sterman helped ensure the idea died. He did so by persistently laying out the facts.
This year he called out the Missouri Department of Transportation for flouting federal law and playing political games with stimulus funds. He did all within his power to prevent Missouri’s urban centers from being cheated out of their due share.
Mr. Sterman has held up a mirror to the St. Louis metro area. He regularly published data so that people could see exactly where they stand compared to other regions in key categories that relate to quality of life.
That picture sometimes is harsh. But Mr. Sterman is that rare public servant who respects the people enough to tell them the unvarnished truth. Those who will choose his successor must look for someone with the same kind of respect.
With all due respect to Mr. Sterman, there isn’t much good to say about the most expensive and influential part of East-West Gateway’s business, the allocation of federal highway funds. The highway policies implemented by East-West Gateway have been a photocopy of what every other urban area in America has done, to their own detriment: Invest billions in suburban commuter highways, letting inner-ring suburbs decay and the urban core rot.
During Mr. Sterman’s tenure, we torpedoed the St. Charles Rock Road bridge serving downtown St. Charles, and replaced it with 370, creating an explosion of development in the flood plains of northern St. Charles county. We’ve built the Page Extension, spurring development along the western bank of the Missouri River and points west. We’ve aided those who chose to live in Harvester by transforming 94 from a country road to a limited access urban highway. We’ve upgraded bridges on 40 and 70, making it easier for St. Charles county residents to commute to St. Louis. And of course, there’s the “New I-64″, a wonderful highway the primary purpose of which is to make it easier to live in 63005 while working in 63105.
Ultimately, as the work world changes, the rush hour peak is rapidly becoming obsolete. Telecommuting and flexible work schedules are rapidly becoming the norm. And people are going to work all over, not just in downtown St. Louis and Clayton. Instead of incurring huge expenses building highways which will be obsolete before our children are in the workforce, we could have reduced congestion through peak-time tolls, sunsetting them when congestion is no longer an issue. Instead, we have done what everyone else was doing, and we’re getting what everyone else is getting.
Mr. Sterman strikes me as a bright man and an able administrator. And I realize that had he said, “Hey, guys, we don’t need two more highways to St. Charles County” he probably would have been out of a job. But for the man who helped this region spread itself so thin, I’m surprised to see the Post laying it on so thick.
I remember meeting with him about the unnecessary Lambert Field expansion that destroyed Northwest County. He was for it. We explained why it was a stupid idea. His group didn’t listen. Of course the Post, Rev. Danforth, Dick Gephardt, Concrete Bob Young and Vinnie were all for it, too. But, I’d never be one to say I told you so.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with all your points Nick. As an engineer who has worked on the design and construction of various road projects, I can tell you that the 40 job was about 40 years overdue. It was an incredibly outdated road. Bridge clearances, ramps, sightlines on horizontal and vertical curves, shoulder clearances, roadway drainage, and a host of other criteria were way below curret design standards. 40, in a nutshell, was a dangerous road. The ramps at Lindbergh were literally designed for Model-T level vehicle speeds. Given the swath of rich lawyers that live along side it and have been fighting it for years, it is amazing that it ever got built at all.
Others, like the Page Extention, I have to agree on. And some of the decisions of the East-West Gateway group have been puzzling to say the least. But, I have to admit that it is impossible to please everyone while doing that job.
It will be interesting to see who takes his place (Greg Horn???)…
Tim - No doubt the old highway 40 was below current design standards. That means lower speed limits and less carrying capacity. That’s bad, if your intent is to accommodate continued increase in traffic counts and vehicle size. But that begs the question of whether those are valid assumptions. In the next couple of decades, I would expect more people to telecommute, changing work schedules to avoid peak-time commutes, and sharply higher energy costs resulting in different decisions on where to reside, work, and shop. All these things will, in the long run, result in traffic counts for which the old highway 40 was just fine. And so ultimately, the new I-64 will be a costly and underutilized infrastructure project, kind of like W1W.
W1W is more like my driveway than Highway 40.