In Wednesday’s post, “An Infrastructure Referendum Is Worth Considering” (06/23/10), we commended Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) on proposing a flood control/infrastructure referendum, even though we thought his $50 million bond issue figure was not fiscally prudent.

But after reading Bach’s comments about that referendum proposal, we have to wonder – once again – about that guy’s view of how local government is supposed to work.  And we need to take back our commendation.

According to an article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Alderman wants to ask voters $50M flood control question,” June 23), Bach’s reason for proposing a flood control referendum sounds like little more than criticism of the Council’s vote Monday night to pass a $500,000 O’Hare Airport referendum resolution:

“Since the Council seems to be okay with assigning an amount for a referendum question on O’Hare without any idea of what it may actually cost, I would think that every argument presented tonight to assign one to the O’Hare question is applicable to the flood control question.”

Not quite, Alderman.

In the first place, the Council reportedly took the $500,000 price tag for the O’Hare referendum from the figure proposed by the City’s O’Hare Airport Commission, so Bach’s suggestion that the number was pulled out of thin air is just plain wrong.  And if Bach can’t seem to distinguish between $500,000 current cash v. $50 million of bonded debt, he needs help.  Or prayer.     

As reported in a separate Herald-Advocate article about the O’Hare referendum resolution (“Want to spend $500K to fight O’Hare noise,” June 22), Bach bad-mouthed the $500,000 dollar figure: “The amount for the O’Hare question is inappropriate.  There’s no evidence that amount will do the job.”

Gee, Don, then why did you vote for it!

Was it because you were for it before you were against it?  After all, you voted against adding the $500,000 figure to the resolution only a few minutes earlier, so why didn’t you just stay the course and keep Ald. Allegretti company by voting “no” on the resolution itself? 

But troubling as Bach’s minute-to-minute flip-flop Monday night and his badmouthing of the resolution almost immediately after voting for it might be, we find his complaint that $500,000 may not be enough to “do the job” on O’Hare even more troubling.

Gee, Don, what exactly is “the job” that needs to be done?  And why isn’t $500,000 enough?

Although he has yet to articulate exactly what is “the job,” Bach sounds like he wants the taxpayers to write the Council a blank check for dealing with O’Hare: “We should fight the expansion with everything we’ve got, including legal means,” he intoned in his best Air Marshall voice from his seat at The Horseshoe during the O’Hare referendum debate. 

A fondness for blank checks is why spendthrift elected officials – and appointed ones, for that matter – dislike advisory referendums with dollar amounts attached.  It’s so much easier for them to spend money when they can get voter endorsement of some un-priced plan, program or project that they can then spin and leverage into however many dollars they like. 

So when it comes to dealing with O’Hare, we get the sense that the Air Marshall and his wing-men – Alds. Allegretti and Robert Ryan (when he’s not the “missing man” in that formation) – hate to see the “amount” line on the check already filled in.  

That’s the kind of attitude that drove O’Hare-obsessed former mayor Ron Wietecha and a rubber-stamp City Council to pour money down the Suburban O’Hare Commission rat hole for years, and then make that ridiculous $650,000 Peotone airport “investment” on our behalf.  But just when that Council finally woke up and realized our money was gone, Wietcha dropped his resignation letter on the city manager’s desk after hours one September night in 2003, and bolted for Barrington without ever giving his constituents a full accounting of that misbegotten deal.  

Sounds to us like Bach yearns for a return to those days of yore.