Ryan Davis | Student Life

St. Louis Mayor Tishuara Jones answered questions from students and spoke about the lawsuit with Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey over reproductive healthcare funding, among other issues including the housing crisis, on Washington University’s campus, Sept. 26.

In an event hosted by the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement, Jones talked about her office’s efforts to defend reproductive rights, protect LGBTQ+ individuals, and reduce gun violence towards youths. She also discussed how her office is handling the housing crisis and supporting the unhoused, as well as what her larger goals for St. Louis are, such as increasing bipartisanship. 

During the Q&A portion of the event, a student asked Jones what her administration was doing to protect individuals whose reproductive rights have been under attack from the state of Missouri.

Jones responded that her office is trying to improve access to abortion through increased funding for travel costs for those who need abortions and prenatal services, but she said she has received backlash from Bailey. 

“We’ve asked for Board [Bill] 61 to create a Reproductive Equity Fund and put $1.5 million in there for logistical access to abortion as well as access to doula services, midwifery services,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, the attorney general is suing us for those funds and they’re in the middle of a [lawsuit] and litigation in court.”

Jones signed Board Bill 61 in late July of 2022, which would allocate $1 million in funding to cover travel expenses for individuals who have to travel out of state to get an abortion and allocate $500,000 for prenatal care such as doula and midwife services, lactation support, and mental health services. 

The suit stated the bill violated a Missouri law to fund abortion with tax-payer money. Representatives from the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, who also supported the bill, said that it does not directly fund abortion given that it covers travel expenses, so it does not violate the law. 

Jones said the funds are currently unable to be distributed, since a judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing the money from being allocated in early July of this year.

“But we try,” Jones said. “And also, I signed an executive order to create the [LGBTQIA Advisory Board] as well as executive order after the trans health bill became law to make sure that we have gender neutral bathrooms in all of our rec centers and to have our Health Department put together some resources for parents or children who are trans or transitioning.”

During the event, Jones talked about gun violence, specifically referring to a shooting which occurred on June 18 that led to the death of a 17-year-old boy and left nine others injured.

Jones said that after the shooting, her administration created initiatives to provide St. Louis youth with safe and fun activities.

“We’ve had pop-up concerts, we’ve done s’mores at the Marquette Rec Center, we have kids that play flag football at The Dome,” Jones said.

“I saw that as a cry for help from our young people,” Jones said. “In response, we opened two rec centers, one in north St. Louis and one in south St. Louis for late nights on the weekends until 1 a.m. But also, I brought in a group of young people and asked them, ‘What do you want? What do you want to see? What can we do?’” 

Jones said that juvenile crime rates have gone down 30% since the Juneteenth shooting that occurred on June 18. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports that in the past year, crime as a whole has gone down by 22% since this time last year. 

One student asked about the housing crisis in St. Louis and what Jones was doing to improve it.

“I heard some themes reverberate throughout your answers and your speech about racial equity and investment in marginalized communities,” the student said. They specifically pointed at St. Louis’s hyper-vacancy issues.

According to the City of St. Louis, 94.5% of all vacant lots in the city are in a majority Black area; there are nine times as many vacant acres of land in majority-Black areas of town compared to majority-white. 

Jones said that she visited the Detroit Land Bank Authority, a public authority that she thought was an exemplar at attempting to fill vacant lots in the city. 

“We went to learn from a department that we thought was doing a good job,” Jones said. “If it’s working somewhere then I’m going to go there and figure it out and bring it back to St. Louis.”

According to Jones, the city is revamping some processes to make them more equitable, including zoning changes to change the petition process for opening new shelters. 

“That’s been a way for neighbors to keep [shelters for the] unhoused from coming into their communities,” Jones said. “But this is also a regional issue. St. Louis has 80% of the shelter beds between St. Louis City and County, and we need to find ways to make sure that there are options for finding housing.”

Jones said that political polarization in Missouri made it difficult to advance initiatives. 

“The bipartisanship that was possible…I don’t think that kind of relationship is ever coming back to our civic engagement,” said Jones. “I totally blame social media for that.”

She spoke specifically about Michael Parson, who was a state senator when Jones was in the Missouri House of Representatives but currently serves as the governor of the state. Jones said that their relationship was built on mutual respect but with the advent of social media it is easy to insult one another from behind a screen. 

“Congressmen should have more playdates — maybe if they play together they’ll get along more,” Jones said. “A lot of times we all really want the same things.”

Looking to the future, Jones said that she wants to be in office to bring in all of the change that she is working towards.

“Being mayor is hard, it is going to take 10 to 12 years to right this ship,” Jones said. “Big ships like this turn very slowly and I want to be here to shepherd in all of the changes that we know need to be made.”

After her term ends, however, Jones is not sure she will want to continue as a public servant. 

“After that, I’ll be 61 or 62 and I don’t think that I will want to be in politics anymore,” Jones said. “I’ll find myself some nice little cushy job and hopefully take care of our unborn, unfussy grandbabies.”