As I understand it 'Spooky action at a distance' does not allow communication, but in for hidden variable theory to work a particle needs access to another particles hidden variables. Unless you want to suggest another model?
I thought you said that the hidden-variables extension of quantum mechanics is "bad" (compared to the "vanilla" QM) because you need to allow information to travel faster than light speed.
But I agree if you meant that QM (both non-local hidden-variables and standard interpretation) requires non-locality, unlike local hidden-variables theories which are ruled out by the violation of Bell inequalities which has been established experimentally.