We’ve pointed out on several occasions how Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark was asleep at the wheel while the new $500 million-plus runway was being built at O’Hare. 

Whether it was the roar of the planes overhead or the howls of residents living in the Belle Plaine corridor that woke him, since wiping the sleep from his eyes and realizing that there’s an election April 7, Frimark has been scrambling to make it look like he was on top of things all along.  So far, however, all he has succeeded in showing is just how inept and powerless he is on yet another issue of major importance to our community.

As reported in yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Officials testify on airports,” March 5), Frimark, 3rd Ward Alderpuppet Don “Air Marshall” Bach, and two leaders of ORD-REST testified last week before the Illinois General Assembly’s Environmental Health Committee in support of another too little, too late effort – this one from Frimark political ally and our state Representative, Rosemary “Cracklin’ Rosie” Mulligan, to require a study of the impact of air and noise pollution on the health of people living near airports.

Hey, Rosie!  Where were you with this brilliant idea when it might have mattered…like two, three, four or eight years ago, before the tons of concrete were poured and the new control tower built? 

The H-A doesn’t report whether Frimark treated the Committee to a replay of his other too little, too late effort – his anti-casino mumble & bumble before the Illinois Gaming Board.  And apparently no citizen with a handy-cam “jumped out” at him during that Committee appearance and then posted the results on YouTube. 

We also don’t know whether “Air Marshall” Bach tried to dazzle the Committee members with tales of how he talked to tens/hundreds/thousands of his constituents, all of whom told him they want the new runway shut down immediately – except for super-fuel Funny Car drag racing every third Sunday from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  

But whatever that Park Ridge contingent did wasn’t enough to even get Rosie’s bill out of committee.  So what do you think the chances of passage will be if it ever does make it to the Mike Madigan-dominated House floor? 

If somebody will take “snowball’s chance in hell,” we’ll take the under.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: When it comes to the new runway, the fat lady has finished her solo and is back in her dressing room washing down a platter of fettuccini Alfredo with a quart of Diet Coke.  And the best chance we have for meaningful relief from noise and pollution is if they hurry up and build that southern-most runway, or if the federal government requires the airlines to retro-fit their planes with quieter, cleaner engines.  But neither of those is going to happen anytime soon.

Had “Let’s Make A Deal” and “Cracklin’ Rosie” been awake and engaged on this issue two, three or four years ago, we might be two, three or four years closer to a solution.  But they weren’t, and we’re not.

Just chalk it up to yet another example of your government inaction.