In Wednesday’s post, “An Infrastructure Referendum Is Worth Considering” (06/23/10), we commended Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) on proposing a flood control/infrastructure referendum, even though we thought his $50 million bond issue figure was not fiscally prudent.
But after reading Bach’s comments about that referendum proposal, we have to wonder – once again – about that guy’s view of how local government is supposed to work. And we need to take back our commendation.
According to an article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Alderman wants to ask voters $50M flood control question,” June 23), Bach’s reason for proposing a flood control referendum sounds like little more than criticism of the Council’s vote Monday night to pass a $500,000 O’Hare Airport referendum resolution:
“Since the Council seems to be okay with assigning an amount for a referendum question on O’Hare without any idea of what it may actually cost, I would think that every argument presented tonight to assign one to the O’Hare question is applicable to the flood control question.”
Not quite, Alderman.
In the first place, the Council reportedly took the $500,000 price tag for the O’Hare referendum from the figure proposed by the City’s O’Hare Airport Commission, so Bach’s suggestion that the number was pulled out of thin air is just plain wrong. And if Bach can’t seem to distinguish between $500,000 current cash v. $50 million of bonded debt, he needs help. Or prayer.
As reported in a separate Herald-Advocate article about the O’Hare referendum resolution (“Want to spend $500K to fight O’Hare noise,” June 22), Bach bad-mouthed the $500,000 dollar figure: “The amount for the O’Hare question is inappropriate. There’s no evidence that amount will do the job.”
Gee, Don, then why did you vote for it!
Was it because you were for it before you were against it? After all, you voted against adding the $500,000 figure to the resolution only a few minutes earlier, so why didn’t you just stay the course and keep Ald. Allegretti company by voting “no” on the resolution itself?
But troubling as Bach’s minute-to-minute flip-flop Monday night and his badmouthing of the resolution almost immediately after voting for it might be, we find his complaint that $500,000 may not be enough to “do the job” on O’Hare even more troubling.
Gee, Don, what exactly is “the job” that needs to be done? And why isn’t $500,000 enough?
Although he has yet to articulate exactly what is “the job,” Bach sounds like he wants the taxpayers to write the Council a blank check for dealing with O’Hare: “We should fight the expansion with everything we’ve got, including legal means,” he intoned in his best Air Marshall voice from his seat at The Horseshoe during the O’Hare referendum debate.
A fondness for blank checks is why spendthrift elected officials – and appointed ones, for that matter – dislike advisory referendums with dollar amounts attached. It’s so much easier for them to spend money when they can get voter endorsement of some un-priced plan, program or project that they can then spin and leverage into however many dollars they like.
So when it comes to dealing with O’Hare, we get the sense that the Air Marshall and his wing-men – Alds. Allegretti and Robert Ryan (when he’s not the “missing man” in that formation) – hate to see the “amount” line on the check already filled in.
That’s the kind of attitude that drove O’Hare-obsessed former mayor Ron Wietecha and a rubber-stamp City Council to pour money down the Suburban O’Hare Commission rat hole for years, and then make that ridiculous $650,000 Peotone airport “investment” on our behalf. But just when that Council finally woke up and realized our money was gone, Wietcha dropped his resignation letter on the city manager’s desk after hours one September night in 2003, and bolted for Barrington without ever giving his constituents a full accounting of that misbegotten deal.
Sounds to us like Bach yearns for a return to those days of yore.
5 comments so far
Glad to see you “corrected” the error you made by giving Bach a kudo the other day. As soon as I read Bach’s “reasoning” for putting the $50 million number into his infrastructure referendum I thought: this guy is off his rocker; this ain’t the way this is supposed to happen.
But leave it to Bach to suggest a $50 million referendum with apparently NO basis except that, in his mind, that’s the way the ORD referendum was done. If Bach can’t see the difference between the $500,000 for ORD and his goofy/pulled out his ass $50 million then he is indeed the idiot that earned him the nickname Bachtard. But, hey, it sure is easy to spend OP (Other People’s) money, huh Don?
And pointing out his flip flopping and what I will call pandering and politicing is appropriate. Getting this guy to take a solid position on anything is like trying to pin jello to a wall; that is except when it comes to spending OP money.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We wish to make clear, for the record, that “Bachtard” was a name given to Ald. Bach by the folks at Park Ridge Underground.
I love those folks at the Underground. So witty.
This is about principles, not personalities. I only care WHAT, not who, gets cheers and who gets jeers. Jeers to all this flip-floppery with my tax money. You are right when you say it seems local government still lives in “those days of yore”. Wake up, everyone! The economy tanked. People are pinching pennies and so must government. We don’t have time or money for $500K O’Hare commissions, for $50M infrastructure projects or whatever this Scharringhausen parking thing would cost. We’re tapped out. Cut the crap.
The Dog giveth kudos to Bach. Mayor Dave complains he should get credit. The Dog taketh away the kudos for Bach.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No, we gave Ald. Bach credit until we read his goofy quotes in the local newspapers and realized his flood referendum proposal was actually half-baked and wrongheaded.
You’ve missed the real issue here, which is that the Flood Control Task Force spent over a year on this topic, and then provided the Council a final report with 40-some recommendations and NO COST ESTIMATES!
Perhaps had you attended the City Council workshop a couple of weeks ago, you’d understand Bach’s frustration (and like me, you’d sense a little sarcasm in those remarks that you criticize). We need a referendum on the issue, but no one … not the task force, City Manager, Public Works Director, City Engineer, or Burke Consulting … can tell you how much it will cost to fix the issue.
There is no leadership on the flood control issue in Park Ridge. We have two Burke studies, a task force, and a Public Works Director still in denial of the problem. I commend Bach as being the only one trying to tie all the pieces together and get this funded.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Your comments point out just how ridiculous Bach’s attempting to compare the O’Hare referendum to his flood control referendum really is. Like it or not, the $500,000 O’Hare referendum figure came from the OAC, with specific amounts identified for things like lobbying, a public information campaign, and legal fees. Bach’s $50 million flood control amount appears to have been nothing more than a WAG.