President Harry S Truman got a lot of attention for the sign he kept on his desk in the Oval Office which read: “The Buck Stops Here.”

While watching Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) discharge the self-proclaimed “high honor” of reading the aldermen’s “unanimous response” to Mayor Dave Schmidt’s recent “State of the City” address Monday night, we noticed two major differences between his words and those of the mayor; and they both involved where the buck doesn’t stop.

First, the Council, through DiPietro, accepted no – none, zero, zip, nada – responsibility for the City’s current economic condition.  Where Schmidt claimed blame for his votes, as First Ward Alderman, for the last two deficit budgets, DiPietro threw blame at everybody but himself and his fellow aldermen.  It’s the city manager, city staff, our state government in Springfield, and especially “the recession” that are the causes of the City’s financial troubles.

Second, the Council, through DiPietro, did not even commit to the mayor’s demand for an honest, legitimate “balanced budget.”  In fact, the only time those two words – “balanced budget” – escaped his lips was when he was referencing the City’s obligations under state law.

So when DiPietro grandly announced that he and his fellow aldermen agreed with Schmidt, all they actually agreed with him on is Schmidt’s idea of starting the budget “process” earlier. 

Big whoop.

Frankly, we’re tired of all of the “processes” that continue to produce bad results.  What the taxpaying residents of Park Ridge deserve is an honest, legitimate balanced budget based on real numbers, not smoke and mirrors…one that the City will actually live with rather than ignore.  Unfortunately, that’s not something DiPietro promised Monday night.

Instead, he issued a call for “departments within City government [to] be combined, services…to be streamlined and delivered more efficiently.”  

Calling for such sweeping changes less than three months before the budget must be adopted can only mean that DiPietro and his alder-mates, knowing full well those things can’t reasonably be accomplished in time to include their effects in this year’s budget, are simply looking to buy another year of deficit spending by holding out the idle promise of something better.  Next year.

That’s just plain dishonest…and cynical.

Equally dishonest and cynical was his call for a “fiscal commission – a body of citizens that can advise this Council and future Councils on the financial health of this City more often than just once a year.”  As we’ve said before, such a commission is a transparent attempt at off-loading the Staff’s and Council’s budget responsibility onto some group of unelected, unaccountable citizens whom these politicians and bureaucrats can use to deflect criticism of unpleasant financial decisions with the words: “The fiscal commission told us to do it.”

DiPietro also defended further drawing down of the City’s already-depleted reserves to keep on paying the costs of “community-supported projects like the redevelopment of our Uptown area.”  That’s the Uptown project the voters never got a say about (but Richie D. avidly supported) and that accounts for tens of millions of dollars of City bond debt while continuing to suck cash out of the City’s coffers to cover the debt service on those bonds.

DiPietro didn’t explain how those reserves will be built back up again, probably because he knows that will require more taxes.  And neither he nor his Council cronies wanted to talk about increased taxes or fees Monday night.

Ironically, DiPietro is the only alderman to have been on the Council for all of the past 9 years in which the City booked annual deficits in every budget year but one (2006-07), totaling approximately $13 million – yes, $13 million! – in deficits.  And he was also there to rubber-stamp a former Council’s gift of $650,000 of our money to Bensenville and Elk Grove Village for the proposed Peotone airport.

From observing his career on the Council, we sadly conclude that DiPietro is a poster child for what has been wrong, and what remains wrong, with City government: the clueless acting witless while striving to remain blameless.