Grudge City

Since the contentious 2005 election, O'Fallon has weathered one political storm after the next. Top administrators fled, and the results of a blistering state audit — initiated by a petition drive during the Main Street Ventures fight — became public. Renaud's supporters were enraged by efforts to investigate the prior administration, calling it a witch-hunt. The backlash heightened when the anti-Renaud aldermen, forming a six-to-two majority, fired the city's popular police chief. The mistrust extended to a new city administrator, and the six-to-two alliance soon fractured. Three aldermen abruptly walked out of one meeting. Within a year, three members of the gang of six, as St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist John Sonderegger dubbed them, had resigned.

The state auditor's report, released in May 2005, vindicated Renaud's detractors. The findings showed city employees and elected officials were carelessly flinging around public money, including dubious travel and meal expenses. The city bought and sold land without documenting appraisals or soliciting bids, according to the report. One of the more incendiary findings revealed that in 2003 the city paid more than $200,000 in salary bonuses to top administrators for duties that should have been part of their regular jobs. The report also backed allegations the Blechles had raised about the city understating its debt.

"There was a lot of self-serving going on in the past government," says Jayne Voss-Robinson, the editor and owner of O'Fallon's free weekly, The Scoop. (Voss-Robinson shows her scorn for the former mayor by refusing to use his name in the proper title of the city's recreation venue, the Renaud Spirit Center.)

While the 27-page auditor's report focused on 2003, Schipper and Hudson believed backroom deals had gone on for years. They were hopeful about uncovering more wrongdoing when Morrow asked O'Fallon police officer Dave Buehrle to look into potential criminal action raised by the audit. She also appointed Fischer, the lawyer, as "special counsel."

The ongoing investigations lent an air of chaos to city hall. Morrow says her goal was to prepare a criminal case against a municipal court clerk who stole $350,000, but other tips started flooding in. Buehrle began scrutinizing the building inspection department, the city's towing contract and tracking down a missing September 11 memorial. Schipper, president of the board of aldermen, became Renaud's most vocal critic and flew to New York with Buehrle to look into the missing memorial.

Meanwhile, the board's six-to-two vote in August 2005 to fire police chief Steve Talbott, a home-towner whose wife taught in the local school district, gave Renaud's supporters further reason to cry foul. Talbott was accused of delaying the investigation of a drug-related death to shield a well-connected suspect. Criticism from Talbott's supporters rained down. Picketers showed up at Hudson's jewelry store. Fischer and some of the aldermen thought a private investigator was following them.

After Morrow hired a new city administrator (who, in an ironic twist, was Schipper and Hudson's top choice), the board began to fracture. Robert G. Lowery Jr. was the assistant police chief in Florissant and a friend of Wilkerson, the banquet center owner. Lowery took the job in October, but it wasn't long before he, Schipper and Hudson were at odds. Lowery says the aldermen wrongly assumed he would back the internal investigations, but he thought they should have been conducted by an outside agency. Schipper, who vowed that O'Fallon would not do favors for developers, says Lowery let homebuilders shape his opinions on key issues. Schipper and Hudson asked for Lowery's resignation. Lowery called their bluff; they didn't have the votes to fire him.

Tensions peaked in January 2006 when Hudson's colleagues discovered that he had been recording conversations inside city hall. Morrow publicly declared an end to their alliance. In February, Schipper was hospitalized with stress-induced health problems and later resigned. In March, Hudson and aldermen Terry Busken and Jimmy Mitchell abruptly walked out of a board meeting. By the end of that month, Hudson and Busken also resigned.

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It's almost time for Fischer and Schipper, O'Fallon's self-appointed shit-disturbers, to begin their fifteen-minute program on country station KFAV (99.9). They call it Fish and Ships. Before the show, they gather inside Fischer's office. A man who keeps odd hours, Fischer has left a pair of shorts and sandals scattered on the floor in front of his desk. He sits facing his computer, likely browsing a political blog or local message board.

It's September 21, and today's topic is Donna Morrow's crusade to find out who filed an anonymous ethics complaint against her in February 2006. The complaint centered on money that Morrow received from Tom Wilkerson. Wilkerson wanted to help her pay for health insurance because she lost her job with a direct-mail company right before the election. (The part-time mayor's job doesn't come with benefits, and Morrow now works as a flight attendant for a charter airline.)

The Missouri Ethics Commission, following a protracted legal skirmish, had recently cleared her of any wrongdoing. Now Morrow badly wants to know who filed that complaint.