Right before Wednesday night’s City Council meeting, Mayor Dave Schmidt gave what is believed to be the first-ever mayoral “State of the City” address.  The picture he presented was not pretty.

As he promised, Schmidt didn’t mince words.  He stated that we have been “misled for years about [the City’s] financial health” and that “the budget process has been a shell game.”

That comes as no surprise to anyone who observed former city manager Tim Schuenke produce a “balanced” budget by seemingly fabricating whatever revenue numbers were needed to equal expenses.  And it explains why the City posted deficits when reality inevitably intruded on Schuenke’s fantasies. 

The departed Schuenke may have been deceptive, but the City’s current financial mess required him to have accomplices: our mayors and aldermen, who provided us with only one non-deficit fiscal year during the past decade – in 2006-07 but, even then, only with the help of the one-time $6 million+ sale of the City property on which the Uptown development now sits.

Current City Manager Jim Hock didn’t distinguish himself with his first budget, which he pronounced as “balanced” even as it dripped $2 million of red ink.  Since then, Hock has ignored Schmidt’s call for the expedited production of a decent discussion-draft budget to start the process earlier and avoid the last-minute scrambling of years past, making himself more problem than solution.

Perhaps that’s because Hock basically serves at the pleasure of the City Council, not the mayor.  Which means that his continued employment depends upon keeping the Council, not the major, happy.  And this Council, with the exception of newcomer Joe Sweeney (1st Ward), seems happiest when budgets are in deficit and spending remains un-examined and unquestioned.

But the most significant line in Schmidt’s address Wednesday night was one he repeated twice for emphasis: “Everything except essential City services must be on the table” and subject to being cut in order to avoid bigger tax hikes.

It’s about time somebody in government – at the federal, state, county, or local levels – had the courage to say that.

Let’s face it, folks…government has grown in size and expense not so much because of increases in the cost of “essential” services, but because of all the non-essential amenities and frills that the special interests and their pandering politician allies have layered on over the years – almost all of which are so non-essential and cost-ineffective that the private sector won’t even touch them (for example, outdoor water parks in Northern Illinois).

That’s why we applauded Schmidt’s prior call for the implementation of zero-based budgeting (“ZBB”) that would force every City department to wipe the slate clean and justify each and every function and task it performs in order to warrant its appropriation of tax dollars.  But Hock and City bureaucrats rejected ZBB; and the Council – despite some disingenuous lip-service by Alds. Don Bach (3rd Ward) and Tom Carey (6th Ward) that is belied by their voting records – has done nothing to move ZBB forward.

Schmidt’s address Wednesday night sounded the alarm, and it also provided some practical suggestions for turning around the City’s irresponsible budgeting and spending practices.  Unfortunately, a majority of the Council is comprised of Schmidt’s political opponents who seem indifferent, if not outright obstructionist, to any of the fiscal reforms the mayor has proposed. 

Which is why we predict his address will be met, if at all, not with competing ideas from the alder-dwarfs but by petty personal criticisms of the mayor and his “confrontational” style of leadership.

But that comes with the territory when one speaks truth to The People…and the opposition has no ideas of its own.