By Tony Brockmeyer
Early Friday morning an anonymous envelope was placed in the mailbox of the First Capitol News. It contained an arrest report from the Garland, Texas Police Department regarding an arrest that occurred on November 26, 2000 at 1:40 am.
The person arrested, identified himself as, Jeffrey Morrison of St. Peters, Missouri. The police report states the subject was in an intoxicated state and was alone. When asked by police what he was doing he replied, “Looking for my wife.” Since the subject was alone and did not have anyone to take care, custody or control of him the report says he was placed under arrest for public intoxication and transported to the Garland Jail. He was released with a summons when he was sober.
The accompanying documents related that on December 21, 2000 the subject plead guilty and was sentenced by the judge to time served.
We contacted St. Charles County Councilman and St. Peters Prosecuting Attorney, Jeff Morrison and asked if he was the individual who had been arrested. Morrison told the First Capitol News, “I was attending a wedding, drank too much, I was drinking Budweiser at the time, was arrested, plead guilty and sentenced to time served. I haven’t touched alcohol since.”
Under normal conditions this would not be a story and we would have ignored something like this that happened five years ago. What made this newsworthy is that St. Charles Attorney; Claude Knight of the Knight Tomich Law Firm was the person who was seen placing the envelope in our mailbox.
Claude Knight is the attorney for St. Charles Mayor, Patti York and represented her in her recent lawsuit against a member of the City’s Personnel Board. Claude Knight is also the attorney who represents Adolphus Busch IV and his Great Rivers Habitat Alliance in their attempts to remove Morrison as St. Peters Prosecuting Attorney. Claude Knight is the attorney who claimed several of Morrison’s votes on the County Council were a conflict of interest and Knight threatened legal action against the County if Morrison was allowed to vote.
On June 21, 2005 Knight wrote to County Counselor Joann Leykam claiming that Morrison’s vote in regard to Bill No. 2707 in which the Economic Development Center received funds from the County of approximately $75,000 was a conflict of interest. Morrison rents office space at the EDC.
On June 21, 2005 Knight also wrote Morrison accusing Morrison of a conflict of interest if he voted on the EDC bill.
Leykam ruled that Morrison’s vote on the EDC bill would not be a conflict of interest.
At that time Morrison told the First Capitol News, “Adolphus Busch IV is using Claude Knight to bully elected officials. This is the strategy of Great Rivers Alliance as outlined in the memo that St. Peters discovered. Beating up elected officials to get them to change their vote. When fishing junkets to the Florida Keys don’t work they attempt to bully them through their high priced lawyer.” Morrison was referring to a junket to the Florida Keys that Councilman Joe Brazil of the County Council went on with Busch.
At a County Council meeting the end of July, Busch, chairman of Great Rivers Habitat Alliance said the group, “Will use every resource at its disposal to stop St. Charles County from expanding Smartt Airport. Busch was talking about a bill introduced by Morrison proposing that the county obtain federal grant money to extend the airport runway 600 feet.
Busch also said, “Expanding Smartt Field would be a gross mishandling of both the public’s trust and money. If this council insists on pursuing such an obviously flawed plan, Great Rivers will stop you.”
Joshua Knight, the son of Claude Knight and a member of the Knight Tomich Law Firm, was present at the St. Peter’s City Council Meeting on July 28 and made a presentation asking for Morrison to be removed as the Prosecuting Attorney for the City. Also making presentations were Adolphus Busch IV, Charles Hager, and Greg Freeman, all of Great Rivers Habitat Alliance.
Great Rivers Habitat Alliance has been described as a group of wealthy duck hunters form St. Louis. They are attempting to stop the development of 1600 vacant acres near Highway 370 and Interstate 70. St. Peters recently sold the property to Leonard Kaplan for development for $450 million. Great Rivers had offered to purchase the property from the City for $5 million and later increased it to $12 million. A secret document discovered by the City during legal discovery proceedings during a lawsuit filed by Great Rivers against the City contradicted years of public statements by the group and its officers that the land should be sold to them and they would keep the property for park development with half going to the City of St. Peters with the balance to St. Charles County and the State of Missouri. The secret document was described by St. Peters Board President, Terry Hawkins as, “A sneak attempt by Great Rivers Habitat Alliance to gain millions of dollars for its operations if it were to obtain control over the Lakeside 370 Business Park property. It’s clear from the secret memo that Great Rivers has been planning this buyout for some months. Great Rivers appears to be prepared to continue the deceptions even after the proposed purchase of the property. One of the most disturbing and alarming parts of this secret memo is Mr. Freeman’s description of a scenario where he says how Great Rivers will try and pull the wool over the public’s eyes by using advertising to try and put the blame on St. Peters, telling the public they could only make this deal if development on the land after the salt to Great Rivers. “
“I have always felt the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance was not what it seemed to be,” said St. Peters Alderman David Hayes. “It is now clear from documents recently discovered during litigation that they have been considering their own commercial development of the Lakeside 370 land once they acquired the land under the guise of environmental protection.”
