Like many Americans, we here at PublicWatchdog look at what’s going on in Washington, D.C. and wonder if throwing around trillions of dollars will eventually bring our country out of this economic crisis…or just bankrupt it. But at least our federal representatives are trying to reconcile such disparate (and often conflicting) interests as GM’s bankruptcy, the collapse of IAG, global warming, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a nuclear pyromaniac running North Korea, and potentially catastrophic wheat rust in Africa – all of which, individually and collectively, are far more challenging than what the folks running the City of Park Ridge have to deal with.

Which is why the stunning and persistent financial ineptitude of our City government – which was on display again this past Monday night – is all the more frustrating and unacceptable.

Let’s start with the $2 MILLION DEFICIT BUDGET that City staff devised and the City Council passed.  To this day, we have yet to hear any City official come remotely close to justifying such a fiscally irresponsible act.  So when the Council voted 5 – 2 (Alds. Allegretti, Bach, Carey, Ryan and Wsol v. Alds. Sweeney and DiPietro) to over-ride Mayor Dave Schmidt’s historic veto of the Council’s even-more-over-budget appropriations for local community organizations, the only response we could muster was: Where will it end?  

Leading the veto over-ride effort was Seventh Ward Alder-Spendthrift Frank Wsol, who acts like he’s never seen a taxpayer dollar that he can’t spend.  We have to wonder if Wsol really is that mindlessly profligate, or whether he’s just trying to get back at the residents for repudiating his expensive, half-baked new-police station plan, and then rejecting his eleventh-hour, confusing and just plain ridiculous cop shop referendum. 

In a tone that wavered between impatient and condescending, Wsol lectured the mayor and the assembled citizenry about how the Council-mandated contributions of our tax dollars to those private, unaccountable local organizations provide a return of $6-$8 of value for every dollar spent.  Who says so?  According to Wsol, the United Way.

We actually spent over an hour surfing the Net trying to confirm that factoid, without success.  But quoting the scandal-ridden United Way [pdf] about the value of “charitable” contributions is a lot like quoting Ronald McDonald about the health benefits of a double Quarter-Pounder…with cheese.

As for our local organizations returning $6-$8 for every tax dollar contributed, we think that’s such a bogus claim that we challenge Ald. Wsol to put up or shut up.  We can’t find one shred of evidence of that claim being true – including reviews of those organizations’ IRS Form 990s which, ironically, we have to view at www.Guidestar.org because the organizations don’t seem to care enough about transparency and accountability to the community to post them on their own websites. 

For anyone who has forgotten, we also feel obligated to point out that Wsol was the Council member who led the charge against a dollar-for-dollar pass-through of the City’s increased water costs to the residents, which contributed $400,000+ to the $2 million deficit hole. 

And let’s not forget Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward), whose explanation of his veto over-ride vote was that he won’t deprive those private organizations of tax dollars while the City administration – the body legally entitled to those tax dollars – remains bloated.  Of course, Bach has yet to display the cojones (figuratively, of course – we don’t think literally is such a good idea) to provide a comprehensive plan for reducing the alleged bloat to any significant degree.  

So we’re back to: Where will it end?  Unfortunately, long-term spending of millions more than you earn – and depleting savings in the process – usually ends in bankruptcy.