As promised, this is from our report:

"The failure of the vote in St. Louis County prior to 2010 had a variety of causes. In 1997 for example, when the County vote was defeated by a margin of 48% to 52%, one cause given at the time was that the proposal was written in such a way that voters were not certain the money would be used as promised. In 1994 a ¼% tax had been passed for light rail, but the light rail did not happen then because Federal matching funds were not awarded.

The suburban communities were said to be “strongly opposed” because they were not included. Anti-tax groups opposed the tax, and GOP leaders used it as a partisan issue. The nationally common ant-transit arguments surfaced: “too few people ride it”, “only helps the poor”, “riders should pay their own way”, etc. According to the Post-Dispatch the agency's credibility had been hurt when, after the MetroLink experienced major cost overruns, the agency sued the original designers to recover some of the overage, but lost.

The pro-transit sources spent $750,000, which was three times what was spent in opposition, but the newspaper referred to the pro-transit campaign as a “stealth campaign” [[in which the campaigner intentionally leaves off details about a proposal to forestall opposition in detail) in which the messaging was vague and ineffective.

Werbel and Haas add that as the proposition did not specify that the tax increase would be dedicated to MetroLink expansion, opponents were able to tap into the bus system's unpopularity."