The College Fix

Not clear the city is trying to win the case

Saint Louis University’s law school has assumed an odd role: defending taxpayers against a potentially illegal use of their money.

Two lawsuits filed by the Jesuit school’s legal clinic, if successful, could put a hitch on a proposed NFL stadium in St. Louis and even change the landscape of the NFL, though the clinic is fighting an uphill battle.

The first suit aims to protect the midwestern city’s taxpayers from getting saddled with the estimated $400 million the proposed stadium would need in public assistance.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, instructed a two-person task force to propose a new stadium in a bid to either keep the St. Louis Rams from moving to Los Angeles, where the Rams owner is working to get a new NFL stadium, or to draw another team to St. Louis.

The legal clinic, housed just a few miles from the site of the proposed stadium, got involved initially to protect the funding of services for homeless people in the area.

“As a formerly homeless individual, [lead plaintiff William White] wants to ensure that the city complies with its own city code before it commits to using an enormous amount of public funding for the proposed stadium project on the north St. Louis riverfront, the projected intended for use by an NFL team,” the legal clinic wrote in a letter to a City of St. Louis official.

The suit’s aim is to enforce a 2002 St. Louis ordinance that requires the city to take a public vote before it helps fund “the development of a professional sports facility.”

“Some of the people who got the law on the ballot in 2002 heard [we offered to help] and contacted us to help” them, SLU Professor John Ammann, who filed the lawsuit, told The College Fix in an email last month.

Jeanette Mott Oxford, a former state representative who helped push through the 2002 ordinance, was one of those people. She has since joined in the lawsuit as one of the city-resident plaintiffs.

Though the city itself is defending the 2002 ordinance, Ammann fears that city lawyers won’t do a good job. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that Mayor Francis Slay supports a new $985 million stadium.

In a St. Louis Circuit Court hearing Friday regarding the stadium’s funding, Ammann argued on behalf of three city residents that taxpayers deserve a say on if, and how, their tax dollars are spent on the stadium. City attorneys also made arguments.

The Post-Dispatch reported that Judge Thomas Frawley “offered little sympathy” toward Ammann’s argument.

The legal clinic’s fight is made more difficult because the group behind the proposed stadium is seeking to pay for it by extending bonds on the current Edward Jones Dome, which might not be held to the 2002 ordinance. Judge Frawley is expected to rule on the ordinance soon.

Either way, Ammann told The College Fix, “there’s no doubt the city plans to spend tax dollars on the stadium at some point.”

That’s why he and former lawmaker Oxford recently filed a second lawsuit, demanding records from the entity that oversees the Rams’ current stadium.

The second suit alleges the group behind the new stadium is “attempting to avoid disclosure of records that would indicate the nature of planned public expenditures for a new football stadium.”

For now, Ammann just wants to know whether the city intends to spend tax dollars on the stadium. “There is no transparency to the process,” he told The Fix.

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IMAGES: Michael Vallejo/Flickr, Saint Louis University