Grudge City

One question that still gnaws at Fischer is why O'Fallon helped MasterCard International, which opened its Global Technology and Operations headquarters there in 2001, get a tax break in 2003 — two years after the company opened its doors. MasterCard's decision to move about 2,000 employees to O'Fallon was a tightly orchestrated project. State agencies and local government cooperated to provide a state income tax credit worth more than $8 million, plus local property tax abatement up to $6.6 million.

A quasi-public agency called the Missouri Development Finance Board issued $154 million in bonds for the construction and holds title to the property, which it leases back to MasterCard. MasterCard pays off the debt, but under this arrangement it is eligible for the state tax credit. With O'Fallon and the Wentzville School District party to the agreement, MasterCard also gets the property tax break.

Later, MasterCard decided it should have been eligible for a sales tax break on construction materials, worth a reported $3.9 million. O'Fallon, through an entity called the O'Fallon Public Facilities Authority, gave MasterCard the certificate it needed to submit to the Department of Revenue for a rebate.

Fischer questioned the deal in his September 2005 presentation. In response, MasterCard sent representatives to reassure the new city officials that the sales tax break was valid.

Fischer is not convinced. In July 2002, Mike Downing, an official with the Missouri Department of Economic Development, e-mailed O'Fallon's economic development director, Jim Grabenhorst.

"As you probably know," Downing wrote, "MC is wanting to get a sales tax exemption on the bond purchases, and it was not part of the original deal. Have you heard any more about this lately, or any other info on MC?"

O'Fallon indeed heard from MasterCard in March 2003. According to e-mails that city officials exchanged at the time, some administrators and the city's attorney, Mark Piontek, didn't think the deal was on the up and up — at least, not at first. "We all share the same concerns in regard to our authority to issue the exemption certificate," assistant city administrator Todd Galbierz wrote to city administrator Patrick Banger and Mayor Paul Renaud.

Says Fischer: "I don't think I'll ever let it go."

---

The post-Renaud meltdown resulted in broken friendships. When Schipper, Hudson and Fischer began to doubt the integrity of the new city administrator Bob Lowery, it didn't sit well with their buddy at the banquet center.

Tom Wilkerson, who was a St. Louis County policeman about twenty years ago, says an incident back then proved Lowery to be a "good, good friend." While Wilkerson credits Fischer with saving his business in North St. Louis County, the two haven't spoken since the split with Lowery.

Morrow, meanwhile, says she feels caught in the middle of a "pissing match," though she says she's hesitant to use such language. "When does it ever end?" she says. "I feel like I'm living down in Tennessee, with the Hatfields and McCoys."

Schipper criticizes Morrow for playing "victim," but concedes he has few complaints about her job performance.

In 2004 Blechle and Hudson were looking around for candidates to run for Renaud's seat. They noticed the gutsy blonde who was pushing O'Fallon to pass a law that would keep high-pressure fuel pipelines away from homes. Morrow had seen a pipeline moved to within 35 feet of her home in WingHaven so a builder could squeeze in one more house. She was standing up to developer interests and, Blechle says, she had a flair for drama.

Making her case about the danger of pipelines to the board of aldermen, she nonchalantly started shaking a can of Coke. In her other hand she held a pin, which she drew closer to the can, to symbolize the potential disaster. Two security guards apparently took the threat of an exploding Coke can seriously, Blechle says, chuckling, because they started moving in on Morrow.

After witnessing that performance, Blechle and Hudson asked her to run for mayor. Proudly campaigning as "the pipeline lady," she won the five-way race.

---

Nothing sums up the gap between O'Fallon's feuding parties like The Legend of the 9/11 Steel. A memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks, the steel is a twisted rusting mass that rests behind city hall, encircled by flower beds and a wrought-iron fence. The legend begins not on that fateful day, but in April 2005 when Paul Renaud was about to give up his mayoral post.

The steel was stored in a particle-board shed behind the locked gates of the sewage treatment plant, as it had been since 2002. That year, Renaud, then-assistant to city administrator John Griesenauer, and an artist traveled to New York to find material for a memorial. MasterCard paid for the trip.

Griesenauer, one of the few city employees remaining from Renaud's years, recalls how they started out at the Fresh Kills landfill. They found some smaller pieces, but it was pretty well picked over by other memorial-builders. (One of the small pieces today resides in a glass case inside city hall. The rest of it is part of a memorial at the intersection of WingHaven Boulevard and Highway 40, near MasterCard headquarters.)