St. Louis Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier was no stranger to complicated and controversial legislation when she decided to tackle the allocation of money awarded to the City of St. Louis after the Rams left for Los Angeles.
In her first term representing the 7th Ward, which lasted only two years due to redistricting, she had pushed bills that would have made it easier for providers to open shelters for people experiencing homelessness and exempted them from bans on public urination and defecation.
Most of the proposals failed.
“I learned that it’s very important, when you have some legislation that you’re working on, you want to try to give your colleagues a preview if possible,” Sonnier said recently on Politically Speaking. “You want to engage in conversation.”
She took those lessons into negotiations over the $294 million Rams settlement available to the city. And while that process also flamed out in spectacular fashion, Sonnier is still willing to call it a win.
“A win is not passing a bill,” she said. “A win is building consensus, is building coalition, is getting conversations going, identifying interests and what are the things that we can coalesce around and deliver.”
Here’s what else Sonnier discussed on the podcast:
- While she said that she thought she got some “unfair treatment” during the Rams negotiations, she considered it an honor to have been one of the negotiators. And, she added, her colleagues now view her “more as an independent thinker and my own woman.”
- Sonnier wants to use her second term to tackle the city’s purchasing process. There are opportunities available for businesses and nonprofits of all kinds, she said, but they don’t apply because it takes too long to get reimbursed for the work. “If you're a small business, do you have $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 to put up front before you get reimbursed? No,” she said.
- In her last election, Sonnier was the target of a political action committee funded by developers and construction companies, likely due to her focus on equitable development. She joked that she actually liked the photos used in the mailers but said everyone should be concerned about there being a “price tag on democracy.”
