From Missouri Digital News: https://mdn.org

®RM75¯®FC¯®MDBO¯COL142.PRB - Let Others Lead®MDNM¯ ®FL¯ By Phill Brooks Gov. Jay Nixon's decision to pass to an outside commission the task to find solutions for the problems raised by Ferguson represents a pattern I've seen in state leaders who have looked to others to tell them what to do. In Nixon's defense, Ferguson has raised a complex set of issues for which there likely will not be easy or simple solutions. It involves much more than law enforcement and the debates about police militarization. Ferguson is part of a much broader issue involving race relations in the St. Louis area that has a history going back decades. A political scientist once told me that St. Louis city was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States. In the succeeding years, that division has expanded into St. Louis County as blacks have moved out of the city. The exodus from St. Louis city has had a dramatic effect. Driving through some sections of north St. Louis city reminded me of how bomb-ravaged European cities must have appeared immediately after World War II -- block after block of abandoned and gutted buildings and homes. Some black legislators passionately tell me that addressing this decay is critical to dealing with the area's failing schools. Besides the complexity of the issue, Nixon has major credibility problems in the black community because of his fervent campaign against court-ordered desegregation of the St. Louis city school system when he was state attorney general. Later as governor, his failure to present a comprehensive plan to deal with the failed St. Louis city school system further angered some blacks. So, it's understandable that Missouri's governor has decided to hand the issue off to an outside task force. Besides, I'm sure Nixon is aware of the political damage other state leaders have suffered from seizing the initiative on complex or controversial issues. The leadership of Warren Hearnes in pushing through a tax increase to solve the state's financial problems was a factor in his inability to ever again win elective office. There was a toxic atmosphere in the legislature, particularly in the Senate at Hearnes blowing up the state's budget and forcing them to pass a tax increase to pay the state's bills. The constant attack within the legislature sullied the reputation of a man who just a few years earlier had been described as one of the most effective leaders in the state's history. A subsequent Democratic governor, Bob Holden, saw his political career destroyed after emulating Hearnes in leading the campaign for another tax increase. Holden's tax effort failed as did his re-election campaign. Gov. Kit Bond's leadership pushing for tougher ethics standards and consumer protection measures came at a political cost. His aggressive leadership angered the legislature's conservative old guard. The attacks and name-calling Bond suffered from senators in his own party contributed to Bond's defeat in his first effort at re-election. One governor who overcame the political dangers of leadership was Mel Carnahan. In his first term, he pushed through the legislature a major tax hike to increase funding for public schools. Unlike Hearnes and Holden, Carnahan politically survived. He easily won re-election and might well have won a seat in the U.S. Senate were it not for his fatal plane crash during the campaign. But some of his critics charged that the political damage Carnahan suffered from that tax hike was the reason for reversing course and championing tax cuts and restrictions on future tax increases. Going to outsiders may be politically safer, but it's not always a successful approach. You need only look at the state's approach on finding a solution to the Transportation Department's funding problems. The governor proposed nothing. There was no specific solution drafted by the Transportation Commission. Nothing came from the legislature. Instead, it was an outside group that put together the sales tax plan that was defeated so decisively by Missouri voters in August.

[Phill Brooks has been a Missouri statehouse reporter since 1970, making him dean of the statehouse press corps. He is the statehouse correspondent for KMOX Radio, director of MDN and an emeritus faculty member of the Missouri School of Journalism. He has covered every governor since the late Warren Hearnes.]

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