Backers of McKee’s project are attempting a TIF Commission shake up days before next week’s important meeting. SAB may replace David Jackson.

Here’s the story by Audrey Spalding of the Show-Me Institute…

David Jackson says he has been asked to resign from the city commission that will consider developer Paul McKee’s proposed $8.1 billion development in north Saint Louis and whether to award McKee $398 million in tax increment financing (TIF) money. Jackson is one of 11 members, and has served on the commission for a number of years.

Jackson, who is also on the Saint Louis Public School District’s Board of Education, said that a member of the district’s Special Administrative Board (SAB) asked him to step down. He wouldn’t specify who.

This news is controversial because Jackson is seen as more sympathetic to critics of the proposed north side development. In August, he spoke at a TIF workshop held by the North Side Community Benefits Alliance, a group that has opposed provisions of the proposed development. In that same month, he also voted to move the commission’s hearing of the development to 6 p.m. rather than 8 a.m., a move that might enable more working people to attend the hearing.

“I was just taken aback because one of the things the SAB did when they took over the school district was that they reappointed me to the TIF commission,” Jackson said.

“I had a relationship with two of their members,” he said. “And that it comes a week and a half before the north side renovation TIF meeting.” But Jackson would not say explicitly that the request for his resignation had anything to do with the proposed development.

Alderman Antonio French, who first posted notice that Jackson was being asked to resign, broke it — how else? — through his Twitter profile.

“Backers of McKee’s project are attempting a TIF Commission shake up days before next week’s important meeting,” he wrote. “SAB may replace David Jackson.” French, when reached by phone, said that Jackson had told him personally that he had been asked to resign.

On Sept. 23 at 6 p.m., the TIF Commission will hear McKee’s pitch. Jackson plans to be there as a commissioner, and said he won’t submit a letter of resignation as asked.

Though he can be removed by the SAB, Jackson says there is a state law that says TIF commission members must remain until a TIF project is submitted to its governing body.

In this case, he said it means that “I should remain until the NorthSide Renovation project is submitted to the Board of Aldermen.”

When contacted, Richard Gaines, one of the three members of the SAB, was surprised that any such allegations were made. He said that Jackson had not been asked to resign, and that his review was not related to the development.

“David Jackson, as well as all other commissioners, comes up for review every two years,” he said.

“I called David Jackson personally to ask if he wanted to stay,” Gaines said.

“This sounds like some diabolical scheme,” he said. “And I resent that.”.