Examples of incompetent and wasteful government exist at epidemic levels in both federal and state government.  But we prefer focusing on our local governmental bodies because their bumbling is smaller in scale and, therefore, more accessible and understandable.  And (we hope) more fixable. 

Take Park Ridge City government.  Its third-year city manager, Jim Hock, has already perfected the practice of asking for forgiveness instead of permission – as he displayed by keeping Carrie Davis and Aggie Stempniak on the payroll for a number of weeks after the Council had cut their jobs from the budget.  And when he finally sacked them, he gave them windfall compensation in addition to their generous severance packages, all without Council approval.  

Hock’s $25,000 payment to Davis clearly exceeded his $20,000 discretionary spending authority, although it appears to remain an open legal question whether Hock’s largesse can be recovered in its entirety, or only to the extent of the $5,000 excess, or not at all.  

But both Davis’ and Stempniak’s windfalls, along with the $20,000 windfall Hock previously gave Kim Uhlig with at least the tacit approval of the mayor and the Council, seem to be borderline insubordination by Hock and bad management all around.  And Hock’s lame alibi – that the giveaways saved the City whatever unemployment compensation those former employees might have collected – just may have set a new unofficial severance standard for City employees who are cut loose in the future.   

So what does the Council do in response to Hock run-amuck? 

It gives him a brand new contract.  With a raise.  And up to a full year of severance benefits even if he is terminated for poor performance.  And a non-disparagement clause that prevents the City from publicly stating the reasons why he was terminated.  Which makes him pretty much bullet-proof while at the same time increasing the cost of replacing him if he actually is terminated. 

Brilliant! 

Mayor Schmidt intends to veto Hock’s new contract at tonight’s Council meeting (7:30 p.m. at City Hall), which we believe is the best way to deal with what amounts to the Council’s rewarding of a chief operating officer whose job performance so far has been mediocre at best. 

Meanwhile, this episode may have the Council re-visiting a decision from 2007 to increase the City Manager’s discretionary spending authority from $10,000 to $20,000.  That may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but giving career bureaucrats discretionary control over the spending of public funds is like letting the inmates run the asylum, especially where they are nominally overseen by too many fiscally-irresponsible elected officials. 

$5,000 here and $10,000 there is admittedly small stuff.  But small stuff tends to turn into big stuff. 

And considering the systemic and seemingly intractable mess that scenario already has produced in Washington and in Springfield, there’s no reason to let it get any further entrenched here in Park Ridge.