If you’ve been conscious and even marginally lucid for the past several years, you should realize by now that decades of an unholy alliance between public employee unions and the State of Illinois’ mostly Democratic politicians (but don’t forget Republican governors “Big Jim” Thompson and George “Crook” Ryan) has saddled us with high public sector labor costs and crushing pension obligations.

But last night at Park Ridge City Hall, City Mgr. Jim Hock once again trotted out his Council Policy No. 8, which seems expressly designed to enhance the bargaining position of the City’s unionized employees, to give Hock and City staffers more authority over negotiations, and to tie the hands of the Council with even more secrecy about those negotiations.

Fortunately, six members of the City Council told Hock to pound sand, while only one alderman voted for Hock’s ridiculous policy: Tom Bernick (6th), who tried his shameless best to wheedle even one solid reason to support that policy out of the City’s outside labor attorney, Bob Smith, by punctuating his questions with the disclaimer: “I’m not a labor attorney.”

We know that, Little Tommy.  You’re a “businessman,” as you keep reminding us every time you cast another one of your un-businesslike votes to spend money the City doesn’t have.

It appears Hock came up with Policy No. 8 as a diversion in response to Mayor Dave Schmidt’s scathing criticism of the firefighters negotiating “Ground Rules” that Fire Chief Mike Zywanski boneheaded-ly proposed last year without even consulting the mayor or the Council – and then took two weeks to summon up enough integrity to actually admit he did so.  That seems to have been the motivation behind Ald. Rich DiPietro’s (2nd) pointed comment to Hock that no “ground rules” will be adopted by any negotiating team without Council approval. 

Exactly!

A few other important points about labor negotiations were made last night, thanks to questions by Schmidt, that should start to level the playing field for the taxpayers in connection with the upcoming union negotiations.

The first is Attorney Smith’s acknowledgment that the City can publicly ask the various employee unions to conduct negotiations in “open” sessions which the public and press can attend and report about.  Of course, we don’t expect the unions to agree: the last thing they want is public scrutiny of their negotiating demands and tactics.

Which leads us to the second important point raised by Schmidt in a question to Attorney Smith: in the absence of any restrictive guidelines (like those proposed last year by Chief Z) or policies (like Policy No. 8 proposed by Hock), the City can report the details of the negotiations – including the various demands and offers by both sides – to the taxpayers, so long as it is done in a “neutral” fashion.

Excellent!

Now all we need is for the Council to insist that the members of the City’s negotiating team(s) truthfully and accurately report those negotiation details so that the Council and the taxpayers are properly informed on a timely basis.  Given past performance by certain members of City staff, however, that may pose a problem all its own.  

But at least the tide finally appears to be turning a bit in favor of transparency for the people who pay for City government.

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