Saturday was Park Ridge City Council budget workshop No. 3, and it provided a peek into why Illinois is currently vying with California as the state with the most screwed-up finances – and how Park Ridge may be headed down that same path, albeit on a smaller scale.

Unless you’ve been in a merciful coma the past couple of years, you are painfully aware of what yesterday’s Chicago Tribune editorial (“Last Chance,” 3/21/10) described as this state’s “free-fall into insolvency” that “was designed intentionally and executed methodically” over many years by incompetent or corrupt state legislators who created “spending obligations that the people of Illinois cannot pay as costs come due.”

If so, you shouldn’t be surprised to find out that on Saturday both of our state legislators, Democrat Sen. Dan Kotowski and Republican Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, encouraged the City to take a page from the Springfield playbook and commit to more spending – even though the City’s proposed 2010-11 budget is already $227,000 in deficit despite the highest City property tax increase (5%) in several years, substantial water and sewer rate increases, a 1 cent/gallon gasoline tax increase, and personnel cuts that would eliminate 3 firefighters, 4 police officers, and 2 community service officers. 

In other words, just because we can’t pay our current bills doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend more.  Brilliant!

Mulligan showed up in person and sounded like she was asking for the City Council to provide the full $200,000+ sought by various privately-run social service and cultural organizations that have been receiving handouts of tax dollars for years.  In almost the very next breath, however, Rosie warned the Council that it should expect the 30% cut in State funding of municipalities that Gov. Quinn has proposed, which will strip $900,000+ from the City’s revenue column and add it to the projected deficit.

Does that sound as crazy to you as it does to us? 

Not to be outdone by Mulligan the Republican, Kotowski the Democrat submitted a written statement that was read into the record by the president of the Cultural Arts Council, encouraging funding of that organization so that it, in turn, can fund artsy shmartzy kinds of things…like, for example, St. Andrew’s students’ painting of murals on rain barrels.

That’s it, that’s all.  No mention by either Rosie or Danny of where extra revenues might be found to pay for these new expenses.  No mention by either of them of what additional cuts to other spending might be made to off-set these new expenditures.  Just more mindless requests to spend more money we don’t have.

That’s the kind of bi-partisan buffoonery that has given rise to the term “The Combine” being used to describe its practitioners in Springpatch, and thats the kind of fiscal irresponsibility that has Illinois on the ropes and sliding toward the canvass.  Apparently Rosie and Danny want to import it to Park Ridge…even though our City government has been doing some version of it for most of the past decade.

Predictably, Alds. Robert Ryan (5th Ward) and Don Bach (3rd Ward) jumped at the opportunity and called on City Mgr. Jim Hock to provide 100% funding to all those private groups, while also warning him to make sure he comes back with a balanced budget.  And Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) chimed in that cutting all funding to the community organizations is unacceptable to him.  That means Hock will need to figure out how to pull $1.3 million of additional cuts and/or revenues out of his…hat…between now and this coming Saturday.

How’s that new “jacket” feeling, Mr. Hock?  Nice and warm?  Is a return to Michigan looking more attractive by the day?

We here at PublicWatchdog recognize there is some value to the social and cultural services those private community groups provide, even though most of them also serve residents outside of Park Ridge; and even though we are skeptical of the grandiose claims that those services are “essential” to the quality of life in our community or generate sizable revenue for our local merchants.  But we oppose what amounts to donations of tax dollars to private organizations, especially when those “donations” are in amounts that bear no understandable relationship to the specific services or specific benefits received by Park Ridge residents.

Bach, Ryan, and their fellow alder-spenders don’t seem to like hearing about how they have to make hard choices on what to spend our money.  The $200,000+ they want for the community groups could cover the cost of two of the cops or firemen (at $94,758.66/year and $94,258.63/year, respectively) that have been cut from the proposed budget.  And those cops and firemen would be providing services to Park Ridge, not the surrounding areas.

Irrespective of whether or not one supports these kinds of expenditures, the sad fact is that the money’s just not there – even with tax increases and the major service cuts already proposed – because of years of financial mismanagement unrelated to the current world economic problems.  So tough choices must be made, with true “needs” taking precedence over mere wants.

But the spendthrift politicians on the Council don’t have the nerve to say that, especially to a room full of voters with their hands out.  That makes them no different from their fellow spendthrift politicians down in Springfield.