Gimme, gimme, gimme

October 9th, 2009 at 09:51am Linda Grist Cunningham

The RiverHawks, our local, professional baseball team, are good for the community. So is Target, Macy’s and Beef-a-Roo.

So, too, the Park District and the Forest Preserve. Ditto Amcore, Alpine Bank and Anderson Automotive. Same for Hamilton Sundstrand, the police and firefighters, Woodward and, darn it, the Rockford Register Star. And, OK, yeah, government is good for the community, too; well, most of the time anyway.

Do you see a trend here? If not, let me clarify: Businesses and government that create jobs, support quality lifestyles, get work done or save lives are, well, good for the community.  It takes a village, so to speak.

We all bring something to the table, so let’s not argue about who is the most important. These days there’s scant food to be shared. Learning to do more, much more, with much less is not a cliche. It’s today’s way of life.

I am annoyed, though not particularly surprised, this week at the attempts by the Winnebago County Board chair and others to extort the Rockford School District: Pay us, said the county, to keep our workers employed so that you (the school district) will get your property tax revenues on time. Then, there was the attempt by the RiverHawks to get its tax bite reduced by warning that if taxing bodies didn’t lighten up on them, there’d be no baseball.

Chair Scott Christiansen, apparently irritated by the lack of support for his plan from the Register Star, tried to tell us that it was just like the city and the school district sharing costs for a truancy reduction program. Lands, Scott, most of the time I respect your creative and smart approaches to problems, but that’s just nutty desperation.

At least Rockford Mayor Morrissey had the good grace to say his own ultimatum City Council was just that: raise the garbage fees $3 a month or layoff more than 30 more city employees. And, when some City Council members went all wiggy about being “threatened,” surely they were just being disingenuous? You have to have to be clueless not to know government finances everywhere are half a step from the bankruptcy cliff.

If it weren’t so serious, if so much were not at stake, it would be fun to watch elected officials and public employees try to increase productivity, improve quality performance, improve customer service, streamline operations and cut expenses — all at the same time. Private businesses have been at that for the past20 years.

So, where do the RiverHawks fit in this? Gotta love ‘em for trying. Private business asking for a government handout. I guess they saw everyone else getting in line and figured they might as well queue up, too.

Welcome, guys, to the “government ought to be run like a business” world. You better get over that learning curve fast.

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