By selecting Chesterfield Mayor John Nations as its new president, Metro has tapped a local politician with no experience in running a transit agency.

But Metro officials credited Nations, 47, on Tuesday with demonstrating strong leadership running the successful Proposition A sales tax campaign in April and building the kinds of regional coalitions the agency will need in the future.

"Today begins a new chapter in commitment to public transportation, to public service and to use our public transportation to grow our jobs in the St. Louis region," Nations said Tuesday.

Nations will earn $250,000 a year and begin his job in late October. He will succeed Robert Baer, who has served the past 34 months in what was supposed to be a three-month, temporary job.

Nations will resign his position as mayor of Chesterfield on Oct. 18. He will also step down from his position at the Armstrong Teasdale law firm, where he is a partner.

He will take over an agency whose public image was badly damaged by significant cost overruns on the Forest Park-to-Shrewsbury MetroLink line and an unsuccessful lawsuit to recover some of the losses. But the agency rebounded, and St. Louis County voters in April approved a half-cent sales tax to fund transit.

It marked the first infusion of new transit revenue in 15 years.

Metro Board Chairman Vincent C. Schoemehl Jr. said that shortly after the passage of the Proposition A sales tax measure, the agency met with 26 members of the St. Louis region and learned that people had confidence in the transit product Metro delivers.

"What people ... told us is that what we need in a president of this agency is who can build partnerships and relationships in this community," Schoemehl said.

Metro advertised the job both locally and in national trade publications. The agency received 110 résumés from people interested in the job, said Metro Commissioner Hugh Scott. The field was narrowed to five candidates and ultimately two finalists.

Metro's 10-member governing board approved the final selection. Schoemehl would not disclose the vote.

Before the Proposition A campaign, Nations helped build a coalition in west St. Louis County to keep buses running to nursing homes, hospitals and the Chesterfield Commons shopping center in the face of Metro's March 2009 service cuts.

Nations said Tuesday that Metro was poised to expand the reach of public transportation and make it an ingredient in the region's economic development.

The first priority, he said, will be to make good on the campaign promise to restore transit service that was significantly scaled back in March 2009. The second will be to ensure the agency is run in a responsible manner. The third will be to expand the scope of public transit to use it as an economic development tool.

At a news conference Tuesday, he addressed questions about how his experience will prepare him to run a transit agency.

"Most of the experiences in my life have prepared me for this day," Nations said. "Not only being the mayor of one of the largest cities around, but as a lawyer it has been the major part of my practice to build some of the finest public-private partnerships, which have added jobs to the region, added infrastructure to the region."

Still, Jonathon Burns of Citizens for Better Transit questioned the selection.

Burns, who campaigned against the transit sales tax increase in St. Louis County, said in an interview that the public should be able to see the 'short list" of candidates to judge how Nations' qualifications stacked up to the competition.

"It begs the question," Burns said. "If there were other people who were more qualified, was this just a reward for running a successful campaign?"

Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, said he was not troubled by a selection that was admittedly "outside of the box," in part, because Metro's transit operations were working well.

"We think, with John, he's demonstrated that he can lead," Rainford said. "That he can build alliances. And that he can unite people, including people who have different ways of thinking about things. He can unite them around a common cause."

Baer was credited with restoring credibility to the agency after the courtroom loss in December 2007. He expressed hope that Nations can provide stability in an agency that has had three top executives in the past 13 years. Nations' contract is for a five-year term.

"It's an appropriate time for me to pass the mantle of leadership," Baer said.

"I think going forward, we need fresh ideas. We need new energy. We need a new vision of what Metro can accomplish to even better serve the people of the region."

Nations is a Republican, but Baer said Metro's new leader would have to be "apolitical" in dealing with other agencies, including the Missouri and Illinois legislatures, two state transportation agencies and the region's congressional delegation in Washington, to secure transit funding.