We here at PublicWatchdog are fans of charity, including all those “charitable” private community organizations which provide a variety of services that (we are told) contribute to the “character” of our community.  Which is why, back in the summer of 2008, we encouraged our readers to make voluntary contributions to the Center of Concern (“A Great Time To Support Our Center Of Concern,” 06/16/08). 

But as much as we support and encourage voluntary private contributions to those private organizations, we oppose with equal vigor the contribution of tax dollars forcibly collected by governmental bodies (like the City of Park Ridge) to those very same organizations.

Why?  Because it is, plainly and simply, bad public policy. 

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government,” stated James Madison, as a member of Congress in a speech in the House of Representatives in January 1794.  In 1887, President Grover Cleveland expressed a similar sentiment: “I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds…[as] I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”

Both Madison and Cleveland were not opposed to charitable contributions, just to those contributions being made by government from public funds.

But if the City’s 2010-11 budget is passed “as is” following last Wednesday night’s budget workshop, $185,680 will be taken from the pockets of Park Ridge taxpayers during the coming fiscal year and put in the pockets of the Center of Concern, Meals on Wheels, the Brickton Art Gallery, the Kalo Foundation, and a number of other private organizations; and in the pocket of the quasi-private Senior Center.

For those of you who care about things like police and fire protection, and who understand that responsible budgeting often requires hard choices that sometimes call for robbing Peter to pay Paul, that $185,680 represents almost the full cost of two police officers or firefighters.  And it also represents a good chunk of the extra $5 the Council voted to tack onto the annual cost of your vehicle sticker.

Not surprisingly, two of the principal sponsors of this year’s version of that long-standing bad policy are Alds. Don Bach (3rd) and Robert Ryan (5th), both of whom act and sound like they hold the moral high-ground whenever they talk about these kinds of contributions.  Just last Wednesday night Ryan endorsed these kinds of contributions by claiming that “Park Ridge is a caring community” that wants the Council to make these contributions.

But if the residents of Park Ridge really wanted to make these contributions, they could and would have already made them directly out of their own pockets.  The fact that they haven’t raises an important question that underlies the policy positions expressed by Madison and Cleveland:  What’s “moral” about giving somebody else’s money to the charity of your choice, especially when that money is effectively confiscated from those other somebodies by taxation?

Throwing money at these organizations in this way is also dishonest, because it is unrelated to the nature, kind and amount of services each of these organizations provides to Park Ridge residents.

If funding these organizations is truly something a majority of Park Ridge residents wants the City to do with our tax dollars, the honest way to do it would be for the City to contract to pay a specific amount for each unit of service provided to Park Ridge residents; e.g., X dollars for each meal on wheels delivered to a qualified Park Ridge resident, X dollars for each night of housing provided to a Park Ridge resident by the Center of Concern, X dollars for each concert in the park, etc.

Neither those private organizations nor our aldermen, however, are even suggesting that kind of quid pro quo.  That’s because it ultimately requires accountability – both from the organizations to show what they are providing, to whom, and at what cost; and from the aldermen, to show why they are giving our money away, and why they are giving it to some private organizations but not to others.

So don’t hold your breath waiting for that kind of accountability from either group…unless you look good in blue.