Tonight is the deadline for the City Council to over-ride Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of the Council’s unrestricted giveaway of $190,000 of City funds to 13 select private community organizations – without any limitations on how the money is spent/used, and without requiring any accountability from those recipients for that spending/use. 

That Schmidt’s veto will be over-ridden on at least some of those donations is pretty much a foregone conclusion.  Over-ride takes five votes, and if all five of those Frimark Legacy aldermen – DiPietro, Bach, Allegretti, Ryan and Carey – show up and vote as expected, at least the Center of Concern ($55,000), Meals on Wheels ($7,040), Maine Mental Health Center ($6,600) and the Youth Commission ($4,400) will head home with more cash than they typically raise from any of their private donors. 

But the fun might be in trying to guess how this will shake out politically, especially if DiPietro doesn’t waffle and actually votes to over-ride the veto only as to those three-four appropriations he talked about last month…right before he voted to approve all 13 of those giveaways.  

Will Ald. Frank Wsol, the only alderman to have voted against all 13 donations, hang tough on all 13?  Will Allegretti – who was missing the night the giveaways were approved – be some kind of wild card and vote to over-ride some but not all of them?  

Might DiPietro and Ald. Joe Sweeney finally realize how their voting for some of these public fund misappropriations but not others is actually more unprincipled than voting for or against all of them – especially where, as here, the Council did not even try to comply with City Council Policy No. 6 that prescribes a specific procedure for making exceptions to the general prohibition (derived from the “public purpose” clause in Article VIII of the State of Illinois constitution) against giving away public funds to private organizations? 

Whichever way they all vote, we’d love to hear each alderman explain his vote on each of those 13 individual over-ride motions.  In the absence of legitimate public policy reasons for these unrestricted, unaccountable giveaways of public funds, however, we’re expecting little more than a simple “Yes” (or, in Bach’s case, an “Aye”) on every over-ride vote. 

If you want to bear witness to your elected representatives voting yet again to give away more of your tax money to their favorite non-profits, kick-off is 7:30 p.m. at 505 Butler Place. 

It may not be quite as ridiculous a spectacle as watching our General Assembly continue to tax, borrow and spend Illinois closer to bankruptcy; but, then again, you don’t need to go all the way to Springfield to see it. 

Be thankful for small favors.

Update (09/21/10): Alds Joe Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd) and Frank Wsol (7th) voted together 10 times to deprive the City Council of the 5 votes needed to over-ride Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto on all but 3 of the 13 Council public funds giveaways, saving Park Ridge taxpayers over $120,000.

DiPietro, however, switched sides on 3 occasions to provide the deciding over-ride votes for the donations of $55,000 to the Center of Concern, $6,600 to the Maine Mental Health Center, and $7,040 to Meals on Wheels.