David Carson/Post-Dispatch

Missouri’s governor has overwhelming power over St. Louis’ Board of Police Commissioners, the governing body of the city police department. Four of the board’s five members are his appointees; the city’s mayor is the ex-officio fifth member.

Police commissioners get a nice badge and the title of “colonel,” but the job comes with a lot of responsibility. There’s always the chance of political headache and scandal. Now is one such time. The department has been dealing with scandals affecting some of its officers. It’s also looking at major budget problems, both in manpower and in capital needs.

Gov. Jay Nixon should be feeling the pinch of such unhappy prospects. They, in part, are problems he created and that only he can fix.

Mr. Nixon took office as governor in the immediate aftermath of one of the worst scandals in the police department’s long history. According to a recent federal indictment, S&H Towing, a department contractor, for years had been abusing citizens through a scheme of fraud and bribery that involved phony car titles and inflated storage rates and towing fees.

According to a civil suit filed by the department, the company also shortchanged taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The police board is the department’s financial watchdog. The S&H Towing scandal represented a failure in the board’s oversight, the kind that requires a government body to rethink its systems of checks and balances.

But as his first appointee to the board, Gov. Nixon chose Bettye Battle-Turner, a lawyer with a long career of public service in the city of St. Louis. Her husband is a retired police lieutenant. Her son occupies a senior position in the department’s purchasing division. He helps administer the department’s public bidding process for goods, equipment and services. Ms. Battle-Turner can’t touch anything that comes out of his office. She can’t join in the discussion of how best to rebid the contract for towing services or comment on other purchasing polices that might protect taxpayers.

Indeed, each time the board’s attention turns to public bids and other purchasing matters, the board president must announce that Ms. Battle-Turner cannot participate because of her son’s status as a civilian employee in the purchasing division.

Mr. Nixon — or someone on his staff — should have known that. Having her son in a sensitive position within the department should have precluded her from consideration. Ms. Battle-Turner should have declined the appointment.

In a rational world, the department would be under local control, not state control. That’s a vestige of the Civil War that continues to penalize St. Louis taxpayers who pay for the department’s operations.
In the meantime, the St. Louis Police Department must rebuild public confidence. A police commissioner who cannot vote on significant matters doesn’t help. The citizens of St. Louis deserve better.

Mr. Nixon can recover from his lapse, but only if he is closely attentive to his next appointments to the board, one of which comes up as early as January. The governor must make sure St. Louis’ finest are overseen by dedicated public servants who are free to fully participate in the board’s work.