When St. Louis County Executive Charles Dooley removed the sales tax increase to support Metro, the local mass transit agency, from the upcoming election ballot, here’s the kind of shenanigans he wants you to forget before he tries again to convince you to pay more to support more such shenanigans:
As its lawsuit against a team of contractors dragged for years, the Metro transit agency saw its legal bills balloon — at times topping $1 million per month.
Among the bills Metro paid was a $624-a-night hotel room, and group dinners at high-end restaurants that topped $300.
The agency covered more than $30,000 in lodging expenses for one of its law firms, including two rooms at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton that the firm used as a satellite office during the trial.
Agency leaders even paid out about $9,000 on a typo. That was the cost for a lawyer who billed for 76.9 hours of work — in one day.
The costs during the three-year legal battle soared to more than $21 million — shattering Metro’s own estimates of how much it would pay for the case. The Post-Dispatch reviewed many of the bills generated by the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, as you recall, was because Metro was shocked and embarrassed by how much cost overrun occurred on the recent extension of the light rail system. Funny, though, that Metro, with its seasoned professionals in mass transit and government teat-sucking, was astonished to discover the cost overruns whereas those of us who bash the government and its teat suckers were far less surprised that hundreds of millions of dollars disappeared into the ether.
