Public Watchdog.org

Let’s Be Smarter Than Neighboring Communities

09.09.11

We rarely comment about what the governments of neighboring communities are doing, in large part because the bureaucrats and politicians who run most local governments sing from the same hymn book of non-transparent, unaccountable and often just plain incompetent tax/borrow/spend management as do our own.

But we were especially struck by two blatantly stupid ideas that appeared in the September 7th issue of the Daily-Herald: Des Plaines’ generator rebate program (“Des Plaines approves generator rebate program,” Section 1, Page 4) and Arlington Heights’ overhead sewer rebate program (“Village hall overflows with flood stories,” Section 1, Page 1).  And the reasons we were struck by them is that they both represent the exact same bad public policy of using public money for purely private benefit.

The Des Plaines program would use $22,500 of public funds to reimburse residents for 50% of the cost – up to $250 – of the price of a portable generator.  According to Des Plaines acting City Mgr. Jason Slowinski, the goal of that program is getting as many generators into the hands of residents who don’t currently have them.

What’s wrong with that picture?  In the first place, when did it become the job of local government to promote the sales of portable generators?  More objectionably, it effectively forces somebody who doesn’t want to buy a generator of his own to help pay for the generators of others who do – with any benefits being purely personal to the generator purchasers rather than to the public at large.  And by addressing a symptom rather than the root problem (an inadequate electric infrastructure), it simply kicks that can down the road.

The Arlington Heights program is an even bigger money pit, with the Village paying up to $5,000 per household toward the installation of overhead sewers – which, if they operate as intended, simply diverts one home’s flooding/backup to other homes and/or the public streets and alleys.

Brilliant!

Both of these programs are the kind of warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good expenditures of public funds (or “OPM,” as in “other people’s money”) that bureaucrats and politicians love so much, in large part because it lets them further expand their local governments and play Santa Claus at the same time, with little to no cost to themselves.   And it’s the kind of pork-barrel politics that has put so many local governments in financial distress, and the State of Illinois in an economic iron lung.

Under the Illinois Constitution, public funds are supposed to be expended only where their primary objective is some clearly identified public purpose and where there is a reasonable expectation that the expenditure will substantially achieve that purpose; i.e., the City’s spending $100,000 on Powerball tickets probably wouldn’t satisfy the “reasonable expectation” test.

But those programs by Des Plaines and Arlington Heights aren’t just bad public policy.  They’re the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound, seemingly intended to mask the bureaucrats’ and politicians’ inability to effectively address the underlying problems without having to publicly admit to that inability.

In other words, it’s a kind of fraud on taxpayers.

And it teaches us one other important lesson: when Park Ridge is faced with a problem, looking at what neighboring communities are doing is no substitute for doing the heavy lifting of thinking through our own solution.

To read or post comments, click on title.

2 comments so far

While I would agree that the generator program is a dumb idea, I would disagree with you on the overhead sewer program — a program that is implemented in several communities.

Unlike the electric grid which is maintained by a private company, the sewer systems are maintained by local of units of government. Overhead sewers prevent sewer water from backing up to your home. So if you created a cost sharing, public private partnership program where residents get a rebate for a part of the cost to install overhead sewers that would eliminate sewer water from backing into your house from the municipal system — it sounds like a good solution — one that works and solves a problem. I would suspect that all new homes require over-head sewers, so the concept is not a bad one.

I would argue that such an effort does have a public purpose and is not a pork barrel project — not a bridge to nowhere — but money going back into the community. Your parallels to a powerball ticket are more of your melodramatic posturing.

Instead of just dismissing the idea — why not try working with it and coming up with some solutions instead of complaining about everything (unless its a holiday and you get on a different, patriotic soapbox). You said in your 7.26 post about flooding that the cost to upgrade the system is prohibitive…you don’t want a band aid, but you admit that the Burke recos are cost prohibitive – so which is it?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The overhead sewer subsidy using public funds is stupid and bad public policy no matter how many other communities have it; and there is no way of turning it into a good idea. As you acknowledge, its benefits are limited to the individual private beneficiaries, not to the public as a whole. Hence, it’s an irredeemably bad use of public funds.

We also can’t find where in our 7/26 post we called the costs of flood remediation “prohibitive.” The rest of that post speaks for itself: if you can’t understand it you’re SOL, because there are no Cliff’s Notes.

You can offer those programs when you have money coming in from a retail sector. Park Ridge is the home of the vacant storefront.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Even an abundance of money doesn’t make it any less bad public policy.



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