Federal Government Knows Its Priorities
If there is one thing you can say about the federal government, it’s that when there is something politically sinister that they can sink their teeth into, they will act with lightning speed to correct it.
Like they did recently in Oak Lawn when it came to the “Stop Sign Caper.”
This is a perfect example to rebut those people who insist the federal government ignores the concerns of local communities.
The moment that the federal government learned that Oak Lawn officials were seven months into a campaign to make motorists drive more responsibly, making full stops at stop signs, they stepped in to block that sinister, unAmerican plan, that, who knows, may have to do with National Security.
Imagine how horrific the news that Oak Lawn’s public works department had — at an astronomical cost of $1,700 — manufactured “companion message signs” that would be placed alongside or on existing red, octagon stop signs that the Federal Government felt it was necessary to react to with lightning speed. Johnny-on-the-spot. Speed Racer. Fast action.
Huh! Bureaucracy? Not when someone in the village (who I can fairly assume we all know is responsible) tipped the Federal Government off to the “Stop Sign Caper.”
But it wasn’t enough to force Oak Lawn to stop. They even went as far as to use their clout to order the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to punish Oak Lawn for daring to do something so, well, creative. IDOT, a state agency that doesn’t think twice about giving lucrative restaurant concessions to political cronies on the Tollway who claim to be minority enabled, but are not.
IDOT suspended a contract to improve the Oak Lawn roads. That will teach them!
Creativity? Using one’s mind? Trying to find ways to overcome national statistics that show a majority of motorists don’t make full stops at stop signs and that a huge percentage end up in or cause traffic accidents that result in fatalities? Can’t have that kind of free-thinking going on in today’s America.
Got to “stop” it before it starts to spread.
“We were surprised. There are signs all over the state like this,” explained Oak Lawn Village President Dave Heilmann. “The project at 91st and 87th and Cicero avenue, they said to pull that project, and it is now delayed. It is a road resurfacing project with some federal funding component.”
Who could be so diabolical to order this?
“I don’t know,” Heilmann said during an interview on “RadioChicagoland” last week. “This was a good project. There are other communities doing the same thing. It is intended to help make the roads and motorists safer. The program was working. What the government did was kind of oppressive. It seems like (they used) a very large hammer to address this. IDOT was acting as a conduit in all this.”
Park Ridge is one, that, for example, has “red octagon” companion signs similar to those the “federal government,” through IDOT, said were illegal.
Outrageous. A danger to public decency!
“There is a war going on. A mortgage crisis. A recession. A presidential campaign. I didn’t think we would be at the top of a federal government list,” Heilmann said.
I wonder who in the federal government is handling the “Oak Lawn portfolio” — who has ties to the federal government and would want to embarrass the incumbent administration?
Hmmm, I wonder who that could be. President Bush? Dick Cheney, maybe?
Condoleezza Rice? I wonder.
Listen to archived radio discussions from last week’s edition of “Radio Chicagoland.” The radio show
is broadcast every Tuesday and Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m. on WCEV 1450 AM, and past
shows may be archived at radiochicagoland.com.
(Ray Hanania can be reached at rayhanania@comcast.net. His weekly TV Show “30 Minutes” is broadcast every Friday at 7 p.m. on Channel 19 in Oak Lawn, Burbank and Bridgeview.)
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