In our 07.07.14 post we criticized the completely gratuitous secrecy with which the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 School Board shrouded its deliberations that resulted in the appointment of Robert Johnson to fill the chair Terry Cameron gave up when he moved out of state.

To be clear, our criticism was directed solely at the Board and its unacceptable process, not at Johnson.

At that time we called D-64 “the closest thing to a secret society among any of our four local governmental bodies.” We discredited D-64 propaganda minister Bernadette Tramm for clamping a lid down on the identities of the 12 applicants for the vacancy, and even keeping the names of the 8 finalists secret until six hours before the “public hearing” at which those finalists were to be interviewed by the Board – which she did with either the express direction or tacit approval of the D-64 Board.

Not surprisingly, Tramm provided no biographical information about those 8 finalists.  Worse yet, the D-64 Board apparently didn’t care whether any members of the public showed up to bear witness to those interviews, much less contribute meaningful information or ask questions that might aid in the vetting process.

But this week we learned that Ms. Tramm’s secrecy has been eclipsed by her counterpart at Maine Twp. School Dist. 207, David Beery, who ratcheted up Tramm-style concealment by hiding the identities of the reported 7 applicants for the seat of departing School Board member Eric Leys, who also is moving out of state, until AFTER the Board made its decision.

Hmmm…is local school board members moving out of state a trend we should start tracking?

Beery and the D-207 Board, doing its best Star Chamber impersonation, kept the names of those 7 applicants completely under wraps through the special meeting held last Sunday (August 24) at 2:15 p.m. (gee, was the 2:15 a.m. slot already filled?) that, according to the meeting agenda, featured a closed-session during which that Board deliberated the appointment which culminated in the announcement of Park Ridge resident Pablo Morales to fill Leys’ seat.  And even now that the announcement has been made, the identities of the 6 other applicants still appears to be a closely-guarded secret.

Unlike D-64, even the D-207 Board’s applicant interviews must have been conducted in closed session – based on that August 27 agenda and a Chicago Tribune article (“District 207 seeks to fill board vacancy,” 08.07.14) in which Beery was quoted as being “almost certain” that both the interviews and Board deliberations would be conducted in closed session. So, even more than with D-64, the D-207 taxpayers were deprived of any meaningful ability to judge the qualifications of the applicants for themselves, and to contribute to the selection process of either Mr. Morales or his anonymous competition for that vacancy.

For a School Board fixated on minimizing scrutiny and avoiding accountability for such dubious “achievements” as the continuing decline in the academic rankings of D-207 and Maine South, sharing the identities (and, heaven forbid, the applications and resumes) of applicants for such an important position in advance of the selection just wouldn’t be prudent.  Consequently, unless a D-207 version of Edward Snowden leaks that information, D-207 taxpayers will have to blindly accept the glowing assurances of Board president Margaret McGrath (in the announcement of Morales’ appointment) that D-207 “had seven outstanding candidates from which to choose”; and that Morales was the best of the bunch.

Just like D-207 taxpayers had to blindly accept McGrath’s glowing assurances that D-207 “had nine outstanding candidates from which to choose” the replacement for a departing Donna Pellar (who only moved outside the district) in announcing the appointment of Paula Besler after a similarly stealthy selection process that culminated in another Sunday afternoon closed-session interview process and deliberation last April – according to the agenda for that meeting.

Whether Morales and Besler truly were the best choices among the applicants is a question that likely will never be answered because, now that both of those kangaroo courts have rendered their verdicts, even a FOIA request for those names-that-must-not-be-spoken and their applications/resumes doesn’t appear to be worth the effort.

But we believe it’s worth mentioning that Morales currently has two sons attending Maine South. And Besler has two children at Maine South, with another one likely to go there upon graduation from D-64. If that causes D-207 taxpayers to wonder just how aggressive Morales and Besler might be in holding Maine South teachers and administrators accountable for their performance, or in overseeing negotiations of the next teachers’ contract, or in considering raises and benefits for administrators, it should.

Over the years we have repeatedly heard parents of Maine South and D-64 students express anxiety aplenty about whether and how to voice complaints about curriculum, books, materials and personnel for fear of retaliation or other repercussions against their school children. And we’ve heard anecdotes about such retaliation and repercussions actually occurring.

Whether those anecdotes are legit or pure hooey is effectively meaningless, however, because the prospective chilling effect on parents appears to be real.

Accordingly, filling the School Boards of both D-207 and D-64 with arguably “vulnerable” members whose duty to look out for the taxpayers’ interests might very well be compromised (if not outright conflicted) by their desire to look out for the interests of their own children, creates a risk – and maybe even a likelihood – that such vulnerable Board members will just be more bobble-head rubber stampers for whatever the teachers and administrators want.  It also raises a legitimate question of whether these opaque selection processes are being orchestrated by D-207’s and D-64’s Board presidents, each of whom have children in schools within their respective bailiwicks.

Meanwhile, these Star Chamber selection processes are big-time whacks on the derrieres of the taxpayers by their elected and appointed officials whose governmental bodies consume, collectively, over TWO-THIRDS of our property taxes.

Thank you, Boards…may we have another?

To read or post comments, click on title.

A “silver bullet,” according to the Urban Dictionary, is “a specific, fail-safe solution to a problem (from the notion that a bullet made of silver is necessary to kill a werewolf).”

As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Chromebooks Aim To Inspire Dist. 64 Students,” August 20), Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64’s new director of innovation and instructional technology, Mary Jane Warden, is touting the District’s new Chromebooks as devices that will inspire students toward more creativity, more involvement in learning and critical thinking, and collaborating on projects.

In other words, silver bullets…which we sincerely hope they turn out to be.

But as we pointed out in our 07.10.13 and 07.21.14 posts critical of the way D-64 has foisted this Chromebook initiative on the District’s students and, more importantly, its taxpayers, D-64 has provided no criteria for determining whether this initiative will be a success or a failure. Sadly, that should come as no surprise to anybody keeping a critical eye on D-64 for the past 20 years.

D-64 has consistently failed, or refused, to establish any metrics for measuring the success or failure of any of its many initiatives ostensibly implemented to enhance student learning. Consequently, neither parents nor taxpayers have been able to judge for themselves whether the hundreds of thousands, or millions, of tax dollars expended on any one initiative produced an educational boon or boondoggle.

Exhibit A? Try the “middle school concept” and the new Emerson Middle School building.

Exhibit B? The 2007 “Strong Schools” tax increase referendum campaign.

Metrics that provide meaningful transparency and accountability have long been anathema to both teachers and administrators – indeed, to the whole culture – at D-64. And the dozens of School Board members who have cycled through there over the past 20+ years have failed to make any noticeable dent in that culture, even as the cost to the taxpayers spirals upward and the performance, at least according to comparative rankings based on objective measurements like ISAT scores, continues to stagnate or slide.

Seventeen years ago a new way to group students (grades 6-8 in a “middle school” v. the old grades 7-8 “junior high”) and a new $20 million-plus Emerson school building (to replace the then-newest school building in the District) were supposed to “inspire” students to higher achievement.

Seven years ago the inspiration was supposed to come through a boatload of extra funding that would enable D-64 to reduce class sizes, increase programs, modernize technology and provide “a quality education that is competitive with the best schools in the state, which attracts families to our towns, and ultimately safeguard [sic] our investments in our homes” – according to an FAQ Sheet by the “Citizens for Strong Schools” committee that raised and spent over $25,000 to pass that tax increase referendum.

We’re still waiting for D-64 to provide any objective criteria to demonstrate that the new Emerson and/or that 2007 tax increase gave any significant boost to the quality of a D-64 education and student achievement, or made it among the best primary school educations in Illinois. The current D-64 Board, like the boards that went before it, goes stone deaf anytime such a thing is even mentioned, which is a dereliction of duty by the folks we elect to look out for EVERYBODY’s interests, including the students’ and the taxpayers’.

Frankly, we’d have more respect for the D-64 Board if it came right out and simply admitted it doesn’t want to bother with metrics to determine the success of the Chromebook initiative. Or that it doesn’t think taxpayers are capable of making that kind of determination no matter how much data they are given. Or that it doesn’t care what the taxpayers want or need because the Board members are more concerned with keeping the teachers and administrators happy by reflexively rubber-stamping whatever they want.

If we can’t get transparency and accountability out of them, at least a little honesty would be something. But we’re not holding our breath waiting on honesty, either.

Warden may be new to D-64, but she’s got seasoned Propaganda Minister Bernadette Tramm feeding her proven sound bites like: “We want to create a learning environment to help students become lifetime learners.”

Not surprisingly, there are no metrics for that one, either.

To read or post comments, click on title.

What difference can one or two votes make on any of our local governmental bodies? Plenty.

Back on April 4 and April 14, 2014, we published posts criticizing the Park Ridge Library Board’s endorsement of the Staff’s recommendation to close the Library for 14 Sundays this summer. The vote on that decision was 6 to 3, with Trustees John Benka, Audra Ebling, Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Hynous, John Schmidt and Jerry White voting “yes,” and Trustees Joe Egan, Charlene Foss-Eggemann and Robert Trizna voting “no.”

But at the very first Library Board meeting after Patrick Lamb and Dean Parisi replaced Benka and Schmidt, that summer Sunday closing was reversed by a 7-1 vote (Hynous dissenting, White absent). And the Library reopened for the remaining summer Sundays on July 27.

Similarly, in our October 3, 2013 post we criticized the Library’s “Food for Fines” (“FFF”) program as a misuse of taxpayer dollars (estimated at $7,000 last year, because Library staff kept no record of exactly how much in fines was being forgiven) that also demeaned the voluntarism, generosity and public spiritedness of Library patrons by effectively suggesting they would contribute food to the Kiwanis food drive only if they received a quid pro quo forgiveness of their Library fines.

We also noted that $7,000 isn’t chump change for a Library that chose to close for 14 Sundays this summer in order to save approximately $20,000.

Last year, when the FFF came up for what may have been a first-ever “consensus” vote, the resolution to cancel the program lost by a 4-4 tie: Foss-Eggemann, Hynous, Trizna and White voting “yes”; Benka, Ebling, Harrison and Schmidt voting “no”; and Egan absent.

But this past Tuesday night the FFF program for this year was cancelled by a 7-0 vote (Parisi and White absent) – although the Board indicated that it was happy to have the Library serve as a collection point for food donations from those altruistic patrons whose generosity doesn’t require any quid pro quo fine forgiveness.

Those two votes produced outcomes directly opposite from what the previous Board had decided, arguably because of just two changes in the composition of the Board: Lamb and Parisi in place of Benka and Schmidt. That change in composition even appears to have changed the minds of Ebling and Harrison, who either found religion or just decided to opportunistically jump on the new bandwagon in both instances.

Whatever the reason, however, it’s the result that counts.

Some of you might not like these changes. We’re pretty sure there are some unhappy Kiwanis members out there, including the ones who showed up and spoke in support of the Library’s continuing the FFF program at the January 21, 2014 Board meeting, as reflected in the relevant excerpts of minutes of that meeting.

That’s not too surprising, given all the special interests out there who want to get their hands on taxpayer money – starting with many of our private “charitable” groups that seem to have figured out that it’s a lot easier to raise money by snookering or guilting our local elected and appointed officials into picking the taxpayers’ pockets on those groups’ behalf. That way, those groups can still claim the fundraising credit for themselves without even having to break a sweat, and without having to account to the taxpayers for how those funds are spent.

These two Library issues are just the very tip of a pretty good-sized iceberg, however, and there’s still a lot more work for the Library Board to do. Irrespective of whether or not the Library’s November tax increase referendum passes, giving all Park Ridge taxpayers the biggest bang for their Library buck will require a lot more innovation and fiscal discipline than the Library has consistently demonstrated over the past decade.

But maybe, just maybe, it now has a Board majority that is up for such a challenge.

And that might be because of just two new faces.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

There’s a common concept in business, athletics and other team/group activities called “addition by subtraction.” Essentially, it means that you can sometimes make a team better by getting rid of players who aren’t getting the job done or don’t mesh well enough with the rest of the players.

It doesn’t necessarily mean the individual is a bad person or a poor worker. Sometimes it’s just a matter of that individual not being capable of helping the team be what all teams are supposed to be: a whole greater than the mere sum of its parts.

That thought crossed our mind when we read about the recent departure of City finance director Kent Oliven, who tendered his resignation July 30.

When Oliven joined the City in November 2012 he inherited a Finance Department that had effectively been a one-man band – or, more accurately, a one-woman band – under former finance director Allison Stutts. Stutts herself had inherited a department filled with people who had neither an accounting nor a finance background; and, in many instances, reportedly had not even received any specialized accounting or finance training. Nevertheless, as we noted in our 12,21.12 post, Stutts overcame most of those obstacles, as well as then-city manager Jim Hock, who often seemed to be sabotaging Stutts’ efforts to balance the City’s budget and get a much-needed (and long-neglected) handle on the City’s Uptown TIF finances.

Even with a sub-par staff, Stutts raised the mayor’s and the Council’s expectations well beyond what they had been under her predecessor, Diane Lembesis, who, in fairness, had the disadvantage of learning the ropes under former city manager Tim Schuenke and never quite recovered. Oliven, on the other hand, had the misfortune of following Stutts and he never quite measured up.

He wasn’t able to personally crank out the work like Stutts did, which meant that he had to delegate more than Stutts did. And whether because he didn’t delegate well, or because he didn’t have sufficient staff to delegate to, the work didn’t get done as it should have.

The only annual audit done entirely on Oliven’s watch was several months late, thereby greatly complicating the budget process. At times he seemed to have trouble explaining things in ways that the Council could understand and act on. And, judging from the July 25 Memorandum by accounting manager Andrea Lamberg, the Finance Dept. as then constituted may have been (and continues to be) so far over its collective skis that Oliven’s seeking to add only 0.75 of a full-time employee/equivalent (“FTE”) seems like trying to bail out the Titanic with a Dixie Cup.

It got so frustrating for many aldermen that, at the July 28 Council COW meeting, Ald. Marty Maloney (7th) – after being informed that there has been a 100% turnover in the Finance Dept. over the last two years – opined that there was “a systemic problem in the department” and concluded with: “I have no faith right now in the department,” an opinion expressly shared by Ald. Nick Milissis (2nd) and to which no dissent was voiced.

That’s not to say that Oliven didn’t make some meaningful contributions during his tenure. His resignation letter listed a number of his accomplishments while identifying other things that still needed to be done. Whether he should have been able to get them done before now will never be known, although it probably would have helped had he taken ownership of his position and his department the moment he walked in the door. 

Taking ownership of their positions and their departments, however, is something that is virtually non-existent among the career bureaucrats in every local governmental body, perhaps because with ownership comes accountability. And we’ve yet to see any local bureaucrat who willingly embraces accountability (as our recent posts about the Hinkley incident demonstrated) – with the exception of the aforementioned Ms. Stutts, who seemed to accept both ownership and accountability with equanimity, even when it meant occasionally butting heads with the mayor, the Council, and her city manager boss.

Maybe that’s why she appeared to have no trepidations about leaving the public sector behind and starting her own private-sector financial consulting firm.

In contrast, most career bureaucrats are bone-fetchers who specialize in the go-along-to-get-along style of management. They generally just plug along in their non-descript management of the daily routine until some elected official throws out a “bone” – a particular policy, procedure, initiative or project – which the bureaucrats then chase and retrieve, more or less capably depending on whether it’s something they like or don’t.  And if they don’t like it, they tend to bury it and hope the elected officials don’t notice.

Such bone-fetchers have no desire to truly excel, which is why most government is so mediocre at best. They tend to be lifers who just want to keep those solid paychecks coming in until they can start collecting those wonderful constitutionally-guaranteed defined benefit pensions after 30 or so years on the job, 5 and sometimes even 10 years earlier than the traditional private-sector age 65 retirement kicks in. And if they’ve played their cards right and moved up the bureaucratic ladder, they can recoup their entire employee-paid contributions with just one or two years’ worth of benefits.  Meanwhile, the average private-sector stiff needs a $2 million-plus 401(k)…wisely invested, because it’s not guaranteed by the taxpayers.

Given the need for less bone fetchers rather than more, we were more than a little disappointed to hear that City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton is advertising for Oliven’s replacement by seeking someone with at least 10 years of government experience for a job that will pay between $101,588 and $142,181, “depending on qualifications and experience.”

Like the ability to fetch.

To read or post comments, click on title.

It took three weeks for the Park Ridge Police Department to finally report to the mayor and the City Council on the July 12 Hinkley Park incident in which a middle-aged Park Ridge man was beaten by three teenagers while a crowd cheered them on.

Unfortunately, Police Chief Frank Kaminski’s monolog at last Monday (08.04.14) night’s Council meeting was more noteworthy for what it didn’t say than what it did. And much of what it did say seemed like just another dose of the buck-passing that we previously criticized in our posts of 07.25.14 and 07.31.14.

You can judge for yourself by watching the meeting video, from 30:50 to 1:06:15, but to us Chief K’s “chronology” of the events leading up to the beating sounded like a mid-summer’s night snow job.

He started by confirming that two patrol cars (of the five on patrol throughout the City that night) responded to a “fireworks complaint” at Hinkley at exactly 7:58 p.m. There the officers found between 30 and 40 teens just “hanging out.” Thirty-five minutes later, at exactly 8:33 p.m., three patrol cars and a supervising sergeant responded to a “crowds gathering” complaint and found around 75 teens “hanging out.” Chief K claimed that in each instance the police officers “checked the area” before leaving the park to handle “other calls.”

That raises some interesting questions. 

• If the exact time of the officers’ arrival was so important, why wasn’t the time of their departures also important? Could it be that those departure times might show that the responding officers who “checked the area” for fireworks, alcohol, drugs, etc. really weren’t all that thorough in performing that task?

 

• Why didn’t the chief identify the time(s) and location(s) of those “other calls” the ROs supposedly had to run off to instead of staying at Hinkley and providing the kind of “police presence” central to the “community policing” the department claims to be practicing – especially on the second call, when the number of teens had inexplicably grown from 30-40 to around 75 in just 35 minutes?

 

• Why didn’t the chief talk about the reported police dispersal of more than 50 teens from the Library grounds between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. – the ones who supposedly migrated en masse the two blocks to Hinkley and further swelled those ranks?

 

• Why didn’t the chief provide the Council with an actual “report” containing that kind of information, instead of passing around a sheet of ideas that he said came out of his “Chief’s Roundtable” meeting on July 29?

Not surprisingly, none of the ideas coming out of the roundtable point to any real improvement in the way the police handle wayward youths. Maybe that’s because, as Chief K has constantly reminded us since the beating video went viral, this wasn’t a policing problem but a “community problem.” Hence, the “solutions” focused on socio-political placebos like a “City wide campaign-Making Good Choices” (a successor to the less-than-impressive “Caught Being Good” campaign?), “Fund Youth Drop-In Center” (that the taxpayers wouldn’t support with direct donations after the City stopped giving it handouts), “Message from Community Leaders” to parents, “Parent sponsored events for weekends,” and “Youth outreach workers in the Parks and Community to engage young people.”

Our favorite, however, was: “Reinstate [Police Chief’s] Task Force to focus on this.” Anyone who followed the activities of the last Police Chief’s Task Force already knows what any new task force’s solution to the Hinkley problem would be: construction of another ugly building and adding a sally port to the current cop shop.

But we digress.

Sadly, most of the elected officials around The Horseshoe either weren’t interested or weren’t up to the challenge of eliciting any of the information Chief K failed to provide.

City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton – to whom Chief K allegedly reports – sat Sphinx-like during the chief’s monolog, which is the way Hamilton acts virtually every time a police or fire matter is on the agenda. One would think both the police and fire departments were autonomous, self-managing entities over which Hamilton has no authority, and doesn’t want any.

Public Safety chair Ald. Nick Milissis, an attorney, seemed intent on rubber-stamping everything Chief K said, going so far as to invoke the police department’s prior problems with “aggressive” policing – which sounded like an obtuse reference to the incident a few years ago when a youth already in custody in the back of a squad car was allegedly punched in the face one or more times by an officer, resulting in a federal lawsuit that was settled for $185,000.

Sorry, alderman, but we believe you’re better than a rubber-stamp and shill for such apples-to-watermelon comparisons.  Or you should be.

Even Mayor Dave Schmidt, also an attorney, seemed to duck into the nearest safe harbor with his: “I’ve always felt that elected officials should be very cautious about second guessing their public safety personnel about how they do their jobs and the decisions they make.” Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but simply asking tough questions is NOT “second guessing.”

Schmidt redeemed himself somewhat, however, with his final observation that the rapid growth in the size of the crowd was “such an unusual situation that it would have made sense to leave [at least one police officer] behind” to keep an eye on the situation for the couple of hours Hinkley was scheduled to remain open.

But by the time Schmidt made that observation Chief K had already off-loaded any accountability for his department’s pre-incident performance.

With flourishes of political rhetoric worthy of Marc Antony in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Chief K praised the Park Ridge Park District with faint damns. While claiming not to be placing blame, he complained about Hinkley’s police-ability because of the different operating hours of its various activity areas. He bemoaned Park District rules for not having been updated since 1997. He cited the Park District’s non-deployment of its private security “monitors”(or “rent-a-cops,” as Ald. Joe Sweeney referred to them) to Hinkley that evening. And he even took a backhanded swipe at park Board president Mel Thillens, noting that his police officers’ hands were tied because only the board president could legally authorize a park closing.

He also deftly created, and immediately demolished, the straw-man suggestion that the assembled teens could have been charged with “mob action.” That was an especially nifty maneuver, given how it effectively diverted attention from what is generally considered the most police-friendly “tool” for dealing with crowds of any type: a “disorderly conduct” charge, the provisions most relevant to this situation appearing in Section 14-5-2 (E), (F) and (I) of the City’s Municipal Code.

And once he had foisted enough non-blame on the Park District and the lack of “tools” in his law-enforcement “toolbox,” he conflated both the weather and Taste of Park Ridge into a back-up excuse: the need to “evacuate” the Taste around 9:30 that night due to an incoming storm – as if a Katrina were on its way and he was not about to let himself become the butt of any “Chiefski, you’re doing a heck of a job” jokes.

All things considered, it was a political tour de force by a master politician who – aided by the talismanic power of his badge – totally overmatched the faux-politicians around The Horseshoe who are charged with holding him and his department accountable to the taxpayers for the public safety and order of Park Ridge. 

For a guy who claims to be short on tools, Chief K showed himself to be quite a craftsman. 

And pretty darn crafty.

To read or post comments, click on title.

This week the media reported that Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt called for the resignation of former Arlington Heights mayor Arlene Mulder as chairman of the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission (the “ONCC”). 

It’s about time somebody did! 

The reviews of Mulder’s performance as AH mayor from May 1993 to 2013 run the gamut from excellent to terrible.  More than a few of her critics make comparisons to former Chicago mayor Richard M. “Shortshanks” Daley at the “terrible” end.  They cite her expensive TIF projects and how, like Daley, she created an attractive “Potemkin” village with monuments like the village hall her detractors call the “Taj Mahal” and the taxpayer-subsidized Metropolis Performing Arts Center, all of which have cost, and will continue to cost, AH taxpayers bundles in bonded debt repayment and subsidies to developers.

But, frankly, we could care less about what Mulder did while managing AH. The folks who voted to make and keep her as mayor all those years deserved whatever they got, and the tax bills they will continue to get as her legacy.

Schmidt’s beef about Mulder properly goes to what he views as her conflict of interest regarding O’Hare expansion and the resulting increase in airplane noise over ONCC members like Park Ridge while AH’s airplane noise is being reduced. He is quoted in a Chicago Sun-Times article (“Park Ridge mayor wants head of noise commission to resign,” 08.05.14) as saying Mulder “has turned the ONCC into a lap dog for the Chicago Department of Aviation.”

Actually, Schmidt is wrong on the “lap dog” point.

Shortshanks created the ONCC in 1996 for the express purpose of its being his lap dog, and to siphon away membership in what at that time was a thorn in his side: the Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”), of which Park Ridge was a charter member. With Mulder’s help as ONCC chairman beginning in 1997, that strategy worked so well that by May 2003, SOC’s 13-community membership had dwindled to 3: Park Ridge, Bensenville and Elk Grove Village. And by that point the O’Hare expansion had become such a fait accompli that even the bobblehead-dominated Park Ridge City Council voted to exit the SOC, prompting then-mayor Ron Wietecha’s resignation and subsequent emigration to Barrington.

AH never was a SOC member, preferring instead to cut its own deals with Chicago – first under Mulder’s predecessor, William Maki (who resigned in 1992 to become a Cook County Circuit Judge, and is now Presiding Judge at the Rolling Meadows courthouse), and then under Mulder. Not surprisingly, everything Mulder has done since becoming Daley’s puppet at the ONCC has benefited AH first and foremost, with benefits flowing to other ONCC members only if there was no risk to AH.

Apparently rewarded for her ONCC service with an appointment to the METRA Board in 2003, Mulder reportedly finagled a new train station for AH and also got the Union Pacific RR to give up some of its right-of-way land for downtown AH redevelopment. Meanwhile, however, she and the other political hacks on that Board rubber-stamped the continuing deterioration of METRA’s equipment and service under long-time CEO Phil Pagano, even as fares continued to rise.

You might remember the corrupt Pagano, who chose to avoid certain firing and likely indictment for embezzlement and sweetheart deals by taking one last METRA ride back in 2010. Mulder was such an unquestioning Pagano sycophant that even after his death and discrediting, she still referred to him as an expert railroader who built “one of the best transportation organizations in the nation.”

METRA? Seriously?

Although Mulder claimed credit for the hiring of Pagano’s squeaky-clean replacement, Alex Clifford, she appears to have done nothing to stop Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s uber-stooge, Board chairman Brad O’Halloran, and Shortshanks/Rahm lackey Larry Huggins from issuing their quit-or-be-fired ultimatum to Clifford in June 2013 when he balked at playing their corrupt Chicago-style political games.

Actually, Mulder did do something in connection with Clifford’s ouster: she voted to give him an obscene $750,000 “severance” package even though, by resigning, he was not contractually entitled to any severance payment. And she endorsed the confidentiality provision of that deal so that neither side could talk about it publicly, claiming that it was “the most prudent thing to do” in order to avoid potential legal action by Clifford – legal action that likely would have pulled back the curtains and exposed the kind of institutionalized corruption and incompetent Board oversight that Clifford wouldn’t tolerate.

That’s what Illinois government has come to – the payment of big-time hush money considered “prudent” management.

If there’s any reason to doubt Mulder was grossly unqualified to hold such a position of public trust, one need only read her comments to Sun-Times reporter Rosalind Rossi in a July 2013 article (“Metra didn’t have to pay outgoing CEO any severance, experts say,” 07.24.13), in which Mulder admitted that she voted for Clifford’s severance package without even knowing that his contract didn’t entitle him to severance if he resigned. But, true to form, she couldn’t or wouldn’t say whether knowing that fact would have changed her vote.

From everything we already knew or have been able to Google about her, Mulder seems to be the exact kind of career politician – 34+ years holding some public office or other, not counting the years she double-dipped at METRA and/or the ONCC – who has helped turn this state into the almost-bankrupt cesspool of public incompetence and corruption it has become, whether because she is too stupid, too clueless, too pliable, too accommodating, and/or just plain dishonest.

But even more sadly than that is how, here in Illinois, that kind of performance over that many years gets you re-elected and re-appointed; and it gets you retirement testimonials in the Congressional Record by fellow career politicians like Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Mark Kirk, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky.

As the passive-aggressive chair of the ONCC, Mulder appears to have done nothing concrete to help Park Ridge obtain relief from the airplane noise and pollution that have plagued so many of our residents, especially with the opening of the new O’Hare runways that substantially reduce air traffic over AH.  Instead she has feathered her AH nest and provided comfort to Chicago while only pretending to look out for her fellow ONCC members.

Schmidt was exactly right to call her out.

To read or post comments, click on title.