When was the last time you saw two large inflatable rats in front of Park Ridge City Hall, their inflatable paws holding inflatable sacks of inflatable public money?

Never, that’s when.

So when the rats and their keepers – a contingent of the City’s Public Works employees and their representatives from Local 150 of the Union of Operating Engineers, bearing signs like “Time to Veto Dave Schmidt” – showed up outside City Hall for the City Council meeting on the evening of November 24, it was most definitely a significant event.

As background, one needs to remember that Local 150 has no love for Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt. It was Local 150 that very publicly supported Schmidt’s opponent in the April 2013 election, Larry Ryles. In fact, Local 150’s $1,000 contribution to the Ryles campaign is the only contribution by a union to any candidate for our non-partisan local offices that we can remember or find evidence of.

That’s because Schmidt has been the first Park Ridge mayor to have the audacity to say “no,” or even “maybe not,” to the unions representing City employees. And to public employee unions used to having their way with the majority of feckless public officials who seem to derive more than a little faux self-esteem from spending OPM (“Other People’s Money”), “no” is not an acceptable option.

Especially when Schmidt can back it up with the support of a majority of the City Council.

In this case, as we understand it, Local 150’s beef with the City is the unfair labor practice charge it filed in which the union claims the City is overcharging Public Works employees for health insurance by keeping them on the City’s insurance policy rather than letting them transfer to the union’s coverage. The union claims the City is breaching the contract it cut with the City, while the City says that particular health insurance provision was not part of the contract the City Council approved.

That contract reportedly has not yet been signed by either party, presumably because the draft that Local 150 claims its members ratified contains healthcare terms different from the ones in the draft the City Council initially approved. That confusion is something we blame on City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton and the City’s crack negotiating team, who are very well paid to get this kind of basic stuff right. But that bungled effort has already been the topic of our 06.14.13 post and our 03.14.14 post.

It was Schmidt’s veto of the Council’s 4-3 approval of that bungled contract, which was sustained by a 5-2 vote of the Council on April 7, 2014, that apparently provoked the “Veto Dave Schmidt” signs.

The Local 150 unfair labor practice, and a similar counterclaim filed by the City, are currently being arbitrated before the Illinois Labor Relations Board, a public body which effectively has become an arm of public-sector unions over the many years that public sector union-beholden Democrats have dominated Illinois state government, not only stacking state laws to favor public employee unions but also controlling the appointment of the arbitrators who decide these kinds of disputes. So taking on a union in such a proceeding is an uphill battle.

But it’s one that has to be fought because surrendering would announce to Local 150 and to all other City employee unions that our current elected officials are a bunch of easily-intimidated ankle-grabbers who will sell out the taxpayers almost as readily as their soft-touch predecessors.

If you have any doubt about that point, consider the irony of all these Local 150 types ripping Schmidt and the Council for “wasting taxpayers’ money,” the second most popular Local 150 sign slogan behind “Veto Dave Schmidt.”

In the Bizarro world of public-sector unions and their members – including police, firefighters and teachers – the doling out of tens and even hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in raises and benefits, without any increase in productivity or efficiency, is wise spending. And spending a fraction of that money fighting the unions’ demands, on the other hand, is a waste of those funds.

Which is why Local 150 member Doug Karowsky can shamelessly argue that “the City Council had a duty to the taxpayers to be financially responsible” while somehow considering that such a duty could be discharged by the Council’s rolling over for the union’s wage increases and benefit demands.

In 1798 the French foreign minister Tallyrand demanded bribes of $250,000 for himself personally, $50,000 pounds sterling for France, and a $100 million loan to France, in order to stop French ships from plundering American ones. U.S. Sen. Robert Goodloe Harper responded to that demand with the famous toast: “Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute.” And later that year American warships and armed private merchant ships captured 80 French vessels and chased French warships out of U.S. waters.

We’re not suggesting that the City spend “millions” – or anything remotely close – on battling Local 150.

But Park Ridge taxpayers should be glad that Schmidt and the Council have let the word go out to friend and foe alike that at least one local governmental body will not be seduced or intimidated by public-sector unions bearing signs and demanding unwarranted raises and/or better benefits.

Or by their inflatable rats.

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