Monday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune contained an editorial titled “Springfield’s lost boys” which criticized the politicians who infest our state capitol for failing “to deliver more government efficiency” and for not “reforming how Illinois spends.”  

Move the site 200 miles north to 505 Butler Place and the Tribune could have been talking about our own City government, which has made deficit spending an annual event because it, too, seems to have no idea how to deliver more government efficiency or how to reform the way it spends our money. 

But this year our City government finally woke up to the fact that we’ve got big economic problems that just can’t continue to be kicked down the road.  It hurriedly raised taxes, cut services and personnel (and their related expenses), and did many other things it neglected to do in a more gradual fashion over the past decade.  But whether it did enough is a matter of substantial dispute, which is why Mayor Dave Schmidt vetoed the budget sent to him by the City Council – a veto the City Council then over-rode.

The printed word just doesn’t do justice to what transpired at City Hall on Monday night, so we strongly encourage you to watch the video of the proceedings taped, as usual, by volunteer George Kirkland and now posted on the City’s website.  But a few select comments are worth mentioning: 

Ald. Jim Allegretti (4th), who made the motion to over-ride the mayor veto: “Like all of government, this [budget] is a compromise.”  That kind of statement evokes the James Russell Lowell quote: “Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof.”  The only question is whether the City budget is supposed to be an umbrella or a roof? 

Ald. Robert Ryan (5th): “I really think we’re micromanaging.” This comes from the same guy who, in dealing with a $50 million+ budget, wanted to up the O’Hare Commission’s funding from $165,000 to $200,000, and also advocated for 12% cuts to the public funding of private community organizations, some of which amounted to only a couple thousand dollars. 

Ryan, twice: “The veto is really disrespectful of the work done by the aldermen.” How so, Robert, given that state law allows the mayor no vote on the budget but only the authority to veto spending of which he disapproves? Are you saying that state law is “disrespectful” of the Council’s budget effort?

And Ryan, thrice: ““We need to accept [the Council’s budget vote] and move on.” How cute that he can channel his mentor, former mayor Howard Frimark’s, favorite directive when Frimark didn’t like how things were going. 

Notable not for what they said but for their silence on their over-ride votes were Alds. Don “Air Marshall” Bach (3rd) and Frank Wsol (7th) – the former who voted against passage of the budget he called “fiscally and socially irresponsible,” the latter who voted for budget passage while inviting the mayor to make some then-and-still unspecified (both as to type and amount) line-item vetoes.  

Perhaps Bach was uncomfortable revealing whether it was 30 of his constituents or just one Linda Ski who gave him his marching orders.  Wsol, on the other hand, likely just came up empty on ideas of his own.  After all, if Frankie the Politician had had his way in April 2009, City Mgr. Jim Hock would have had to figure out how to come up with a million dollars-plus of additional phantom revenues to cover the debt service on the big new police station Frankie wanted.

(Thank you again, Joe Egan, for giving us a referendum on the new cop shop in April ‘09.  And thank you again, 83.39% of the April 2009 voters, who said a resounding “no” to spending approx. $28 million – $16.5 million of principal and another $12 million or so of bond interest and issuance costs.) 

Not surprisingly, apologists for the Council and/or critics of Schmidt are already lambasting the mayor for not going with line-item vetoes – as if the guys surrounding him at The Horseshoe might actually have been inclined to sustain any line-item veto the mayor might offer. 

How do we know? 

How about the fact that none of them publicly identified even one line-item veto they would have unequivocally supported had the mayor made it?  

Whether this budget tussle was just a political football or the honest disagreement among people with very different views of government’s role and its funding remains to be seen.  But come this time next year we should all know who was right and who was wrong. 

And we also should know whether Park Ridge’s “Lost Boys” are any closer to being “found” than their counterparts in Springfield.