Time For A New Mayor: Lake Ozark Needs Leaders With A Spine & A Conscience

Good leadership requires two things:

1) The willingness to take bold, clear action, and

2) The kind of character people want to follow.

Lake Ozark Mayor Gerry Murawski has been revealed as the kind of person no one should follow. And the board of aldermen appear to be the kind of people unwilling to take a stand for what’s right. It appears Lake Ozark has no good leaders.

Voters have two opportunities on Tuesday to change that, by rejecting a proposal to extend elected officials terms to 4 years, and by voting for one of Murawski’s opponents — either former mayor Johnnie Franzeskos or write-in candidate Dennis Newberry.

The city's current leaders have failed to lead well. Let's start with the mayor.

Murawski admitted to Lake Expo the very thing he told FBI and Columbia Police investigators: that he paid for sex with a prostitute while he was a Lake Ozark Alderman in 2015. There can be exactly zero doubt about this. Here is the audio of Murawski acknowledging, "It happened."

AUDIO: Lake Ozark Mayor Gerry Murawski Admits Paying For Prostitute

The FBI says the girl Murawski paid for sex was 16. Murawski disputes this, saying she told him she was 19 or 20 and in community college. We think the reasons for believing the investigators are obvious in this situation, but even if you think the girl didn't lie about her age or Mr. Murawski didn't misremember it, this is just a debate about whether he committed a Class A Misdemeanor or a Class D Felony.

Less than a year after the prostitute, Murawski was making phone calls to young women in the Laclede County Jail, having conversations that investigators say became increasingly sexual, while he fed their jail accounts with cash. One woman told the investigator and Lake Expo that Murawski had made it clear: since he’d taken care of her in jail, she was expected to "take care of him" when she got out. The Missouri Highway Patrol found nearly 100 hours of phone calls. Murawski bonded one of the young women out of jail, brought her back to his condo, and had sex with her. A week later the woman says she tried to leave and Murawski attempted to pull her bond to send her back to jail.

That same year — 2016, while Murawski was an alderman — a Lake Ozark business owner says Murawski brought a string of young women through his wine bar, urging the owner to hire them… but he says some of the women were not U.S. citizens and were unable to work.

There’s a pattern here.

If you're still defending Murawski, it's important to ask yourself why. His actions were both illegal and immoral, and no person who respects the rule of law and the human soul should wave a dismissive hand at his actions.

If you wonder, as we do, why Mr. Murawski was never charged, then you're asking the right question. But make sure you don't answer it with, "Well I guess he must not have done anything wrong." Lack of prosecution does not make a crime any less a crime, and just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean it's therefore virtuous.

So to sum up: While an elected official in Lake Ozark, Murawski admitted he paid for a prostitute, who authorities say was 16; he bonded a girl out of jail and brought her home for sex, then tried to pull her bond a week later; and one business owner on the Strip went on the record saying Murawski brought a multitude of young women through a local business — some of whom were foreign and unable to work legally — purportedly trying to get them a job.

For those who accuse us of simply trying to promote a specific candidate for mayor, we have declined to endorse 12-year mayor Johnnie Franzeskos or popular write-in candidate Dennis Newberry, but we will unapologetically say that electing either of them would better than re-electing Mr. Murawski.

Now, what about Lake Ozark's aldermen?

Last month, at the March 23 Lake Ozark Board of Aldermen meeting, board members sat meek (or complicit) as Mayor Murawski hurriedly rushed through an agenda. Absent from the meeting was any mention of Murawski's actions, which had recently been exposed by Lake Expo, and which violate the city's code of conduct for elected officials. If there were ever a time for the city’s leaders to take a stand, it was at that meeting. But Lake Ozark's aldermen remained silent.

No one was willing to say what is unequivocally clear: Hiring a prostitute is wrong. Having sex with a minor is wrong. Preying on young women in terribly vulnerable positions is wrong. And a man who does it — especially while holding elected office — does not deserve to hold elected office. Murawski needs to walk away quietly, consider those he has harmed, seek reconciliation and redemption, and change his ways.

Again, this is not difficult. Or, it shouldn't be.

But for the city's elected leaders, they'd apparently prefer not to rock the boat. Some prefer to deny the facts altogether and lambast our journalists' work.

We invite our detractors to demonstrate where we published anything untrue. Yes, Mr. Murawski's characterization of some of these events differs from what investigators found and what some of the women involved have said. But we published his perspective. Mr. Murawski says he helps people — and in some situations, he very likely has. We humans tread among neither angels nor demons; we are all mortals, capable both of genuine good and catastrophic evil… and one does not exclude the other. It can be simultaneously true that Mr. Murawski has greatly assisted some people and deeply harmed others.

We believe in redemption, reconciliation, and genuine healing of the soul, and we genuinely hope those things for Mr. Murawski. We don't relish highlighting a person’s poor choices. But when those choices happened:

1) To the harm of a child, and

2) While that person was an elected official,

then the people of Lake Ozark deserve to know. For that we will not apologize.

Mr. Murawski should step aside from his role as mayor, humbly acknowledge his errors, and work to serve others without expecting anything in return.

Meanwhile, Lake Ozark's leaders owe the community an apology, and the community owes them a good old fashioned house-cleaning. Here's how:

Vote NO on 4-year terms for Lake Ozark officials.

Vote for anyone but Gerry Murawski, for mayor.