As U.S. Representative Mike Bost (IL-12) urges the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to reconsider its decision to build in North St. Louis, the cloud of legal trouble around NGA’s site selection only grows – as does the media attention.
Bost said this morning: “If you planned to build a house and realized it was on unstable ground, you wouldn’t keep building just because you had a blueprint and some two-by-fours. You’d stop construction, review your plans, and consider safer alternatives. That’s all I’m asking NGA to do. Are we throwing good money after bad because it’s too inconvenient to do the right thing? The short-term inconvenience of reevaluation is well-worth the long-term cost savings to our taxpayers and, most importantly, ensuring the strength of NGA-West as a national security asset.”
Fix spy mapping decision before taxpayers, military pay dearly
The BND Editorial Board
July 11, 2018
Cheaters shouldn't win, and the folks in St. Louis cheated when they told the federal government that they locked down the 99 acres for the new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
And they cheated by misleading the Obama Administration that impoverished, crime-ridden north St. Louis was ready for a renaissance. In reality, developer Paul McKee was locking up 1,500 acres of properties using claims and promises and money that Missouri's attorney general is now investigating as possible fraud.
And they cheated by saying the 33 acres next door where the old Pruitt-Igoe public housing was razed had been tested for environmental contamination such as radiation, asbestos and who knows what else.
For those and other reasons, U.S. Rep. Mike Bost just called on NGA Director Robert Cardillo to halt construction in St. Louis.
"I believe the concerns raised more than justify a reconsideration of the decision to make north St. Louis home of the new NGA-West campus," Bost wrote to Cardillo this week. "I again urge you to restrict the use of any federally-appropriated funds on the new NGA-West campus until the full scope of Mr. McKee’s alleged crimes are understood, including any impact they may have had on St. Clair County receiving fair consideration during the site selection process."
NGA spokeswoman Nancy M. Rapavi responded by saying they were committed to the north St. Louis site.
"Following a review of mission needs, security, cost, environmental analysis, schedule implications, laws, policy, regulations, and executive orders, NGA decided the St. Louis City site is the right choice for its future and the policymakers, warfighters and first responders that depend on the agency's services."
Fair consideration had nothing to do with St. Louis getting the NGA. Military mission, economics, future growth, transportation, security and workforce all clearly dictated putting it next to Scott Air Force Base, as military planners had been advocating for more than a decade. They considered it a no-brainer, especially after 9/11 when the main NGA facility was rebuilt next to a military base for security.
Remember all the mistakes in the NGA site assessments? They confused St. Clair County, Ill., with a county in Michigan. They had the wrong river flowing through the area. Assets in the preliminary assessment became liabilities in a hastily rewritten final assessment that was obviously changed to fit the old Obama neighborhood organizer vision of defense spending's prime mission being social engineering and social justice.
Well, the St. Louis version of that social utopia is pushing little old ladies out of their homes, dumping rubble next to a school until kids got sick, and ignoring the needs and desires of neighbors who had their streets, businesses, crime and community needs ignored by city leaders for decades.
The feds are wasting tax dollars as St. Louis enters a tangle of lawsuits and investigations that may prevent any north St. Louis development for years. All these potential entanglements were obvious beforehand, and are all coming true the further they try to advance.
Clear land, free land, secure land with no legal entanglements awaits next to Scott Air Force Base.
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