Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s recent 75-year deal handing the city’s parking meters to a private company for a mere $1.15 Billion suggets there is no lack of imagination at City Hall when it comes to schemes to sell out the public interest to lowball bidders.
Nonetheless, recent reports that the Mayor was, but is no longer considering privatizing Chicago’s snow removal services have inspired some brainstorming in advance of the snow storming. Here then are five suggestions for how to package the deal:
1) A Real Taste Of Chicago: In what marketing people call a “value-add”, Chicago could turn snowdrifts into cold cash with a little creative branding. Snow, being nothing more than lumpy water, could be sold off under an exclusive contract to an enterprising soft drink bottler. After melting (and some filtration to remove the larger objects) the slushy scourge of winter could be on store shelves by January, marketed as a refreshing beverage. Bonus: high levels of dissolved road salt in the product could make a unique and flavorful sports drink in the summer months. Brand name? Street Juice. Oooh, that’s “edgy”.
2) Kitchen Chair Bonds: It’s a long-standing Chicago tradition during winter to “reserve” a street parking space by illegally placing home furnishings onto a freshly shoveled stretch of street. By February, Chicago side streets look as if the city lost a war to an occupying dinette army. Eventually, Streets and Sanitation crews collect the offending chairs by the thousands, only to send them to landfills. But why waste these chairs? Have we not learned from the financial news of the year that vast riches lie within items of dubious value? What’s good for sketchy mortgages is good for these chairs: have the city raise funds for snow removal by issuing Kitchen Chair Bonds, debt backed by the value of thousands of seats collected by the city every February. Because people gotta sit, and Wall Street will buy anything (as long as Iceland will buy it from them.)
3) Request Proposals From Mr. Plow and Plow King: In nearby Springfield, a pair of snow removal contractors have been driving down costs by engaging in healthy free-market competition. Chicago should entertain their proposals: because what could possibly go wrong?
4) Outsource Snow Command to Mumbai: MBAs (and the Mayor) know well the pleasures and profits of globalization. Why endure bothersome union wages and pricey humane working conditions when the finest call centers in Mumbai, India stand ready to relieve the pressure on the bottom line? City Of Chicago Snow Command is today staffed with dozens of full-time professionals directing snow removal efforts. Unacceptable. Why not pink-slip the lot of them, rewire the phones, data and video lines to the Indian subcontinent and put the task in the hands of an enterprising Mumbai service provider for pennies on the dollar? Sure, workers would need some training – educational videos would need to be produced, including titles such as “What Is Snow?” and “Archer, Lincoln and Clyborn Streets: The Diagonal Dilemma”, and “So Your Name Is Jugdesh: Should You Pick Jerry Or Jimmy As Your Phone Name?” but these issues haven’t gotten in the way of the banking industry, so they shouldn’t here.
5) Select A Marginally Qualified Chicago Contractor With Long-Standing Ties To The Mayor: There’s still time!.
Few public officials are as relieved by the Olympics announcement as Chicago schools head and former Mayor Daley Chief of Staff Ron Huberman. On the day Chicago lost the games to Rio, the city Inspector General’s office released a scathing report on a “significant management failure” by Huberman in 2005 when he was head of the city’s 911 system. According to the report, irregualrities in procuring communcations hardware from Motorola cost taxpayers $2.25 million for no equipment delivered. As Fran Spielman at the Sun-Times reports:
In an explosive new report, the city inspector general’s office characterizes Huberman as so derelict in the oversight of a contract with Motorola while he was executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications that he should be suspended if he still worked for the city.
Adrienne Hiegel, Huberman’s top deputy at OEMC in 2005, was accused of “altering documents” and failing to follow the city’s procurement procedures.
If Hiegel still worked for the city — instead of as a Huberman underling at the Board of Education — she should be fired, the 38-page report states.
At issue are the March 2005 signatures of Huberman and Hiegel on a voucher for 18,000 radio accessories supposedly delivered by Motorola. Only after they signed on the dotted line was the company paid the $2.25 million. It was the largest of 130 vouchers that Huberman signed during his 13-month stint at OEMC.
In fact, no such radio accessories were ever delivered by Motorola, nor did the city need them.
The relationship between the two public servants is persistent – Heigel has followed Huberman from office to office in the past. Is this her stop, or did the Olympics news deluge keep her on board by bumping Huberman’s name off the front page?
When adjectives flow concerning Illinois pols, seldom does snuggly come to mind. Craven, sure. Treacherous, double-dealing, foul, base and indicted all come far more easily than snuggly. Nonetheless, one very impressed blogger at Gaper’s Block has chosen his words with something less than circumspection in the case of Secretary of State Jesse White, who yesterday announced his bid for re-election.
The Snuggliest Man In Illinois Politics
No big shock, Jesse White is running for reelection. Who doesn’t love this guy? He reminds me of at least five dozen relatives I have. And, yes, before everybody starts leaving comments about all the horrible people he’s raised money from or how long it takes to get your license, I get it. I’m not saying he’s the World’s Greatest Secretary of State. More like the World’s Greatest Grandpa.
Ookay.
White, whose office has been marked by a stretch of reasonably scandal-free governance plus improvements in wait times at DMV offices could not be reached at press time for comment on the suggestion of future plush toy likenesses of the Secretary appearing at tollway oasis gift stores.
When called upon to vote on extending unemployment benefits, US Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), the leading contender for the GOP US Senate nomination somehow failed to oppose the “moral hazard” of state “handouts”. Rather than play ideologue to the Illinois Rush Limbaugh audience and vote against the benfits extension, Kirk ducked out of the vote altogether.
The decidedly un-Republican move comes during a run of double-digit unemployment in Illinois that undoubtedly has Kirk thinking twice about backing the free-market fundamentalism that proves so popular on AM radio, yet so wanting in the real world.
Kirk spokesman Eric Elk said the congressman issued a statement into the record that he was “unavoidably detained” but would have voted for the jobless-benefit extension as he had in previous roll calls last year.
Regardless of the back-and-forth, the shots are a reminder of how important Kirk’s voting record and attendance is being tracked and will be put in play by Democrats—even well before the primary election. It’s also an indication that despite some unrest over Kirk among conservative Republicans, Democrats believe he will be the primary winner against at least a half-dozen GOP primary challengers trying to appeal to the party’s base.
One GOP Senate primary contender, Patrick Hughes, a Hinsdale developer, is holding a rally in downtown Hinsdale this evening. Hughes, a political newcomer, has been courting conservative voters as he tries to gain name recognition across Illinois.
Officials with the corrections agency and the Quinn administration declined to provide specifics after announcing the plan late this afternoon. Corrections spokeswoman Januari Smith said the bulk of those to be released and placed on supervised parole will be drug and property crime offenders. The move is estimated to save the agency about $5 million a year, Smith said, though Quinn is giving corrections an extra $2 million to monitor those who are released.
The release of prisoners is another symptom of the state’s dire fiscal situation, and is coupled with Quinn’s plan to layoff approximately 1,000 prison workers. The department will layoff 419 workers effective at month’s end.
Meanwhile, Quinn gave the department an extra $2 million to help divert offenders from state prisons. That money will go toward drug treatment and other community-based alternatives in an effort to reduce the number of people who receive short prison sentences. Prison officials say 47 percent of offenders released from custody each year serve six months or less behind bars.
“You can’t even sell a public asset today,” lamented Mayor Daley wistfully.
The Mayor’s complaint came in response to mounting questions over his $1.15 billion lease of the city’s parking meters to a company that has proven incompetent to running those meters. As so often happens in Daleyspeak, the direction and meaning of the words can go in more than one direction.
What the Mayor meant was to congratulate himself on the timing of the deal, suggesting that the $14.8 million per year from Chicago Parking Meters, LLC was the absolute best the city could get.
To believe that, one has to swallow that Chicagoans only pump $40,000 per day in quarters into the parking meters of the city – a ridiculous presumption that is one complaint in the lawsuit being levied against the city on behalf of the public by the Independent Voters of Illinois – Independent Precinct Organization. IVI-IPO says the city should have gotten between $2 and $3.5 billion for such a lease – but they also say the deal is an outright illegal use of public funds and distortion of the law that places the power to rescind driving privileges in the hands of a private corporation through the issuance of tickets.
“[The meters were] sold at the highest time. You can’t even sell a public asset today. You can’t sell anything today” says the Mayor.
Given his lousy negotiation and vetting skills, I’d consider the city lucky to escape the specter of further privatization boondoggles, but what did he have on his mind that the economic downturn has put the kibosh on?
Lake Shore Drive renamed to Doritos Way?
Selling the Chicago River fishing rights to Honeywell (thermostats need mercury after all, and the fish have plenty.)
Perhaps Lincoln Park Zoo to Oscar Mayer, so the world may be introduced to Seal and Pimento loaf?
Individual pothole sponsorships? Beach lifeguards replaced with a phone connected to a call center in Bangalore? Cops directing traffic replaced with near-minimum-wage workers?
Wait, we did that one already.
“You can’t even sell a public asset today?” Blessing counted.
Building inspector Richard Kus, brother of Chicago’s former zoning administrator Edward Kus will need to find another $87,720-per-year gig according to a Fran Spielman report in the Sun-Times. Kus was the subject of an inspector general’s investigation into Kus failing to install a water meter in his home. Served with a $7,640 bill for water and sewer fees, Kus is one of a recent wave of shakeouts from the building department.
On Monday Buildings Commissioner Richard Monocchio concurred and place Kus on administrative leave pending termination proceedings.
Kus could not be reached for comment.
In recent months, Monocchio has taken a similarly hard line with other wayward employees to erase the stain of Operation Crooked Code — an undercover city-federal investigation that has netted nearly two dozen people, including 15 city employees, on charges that cash bribes and lucrative gifts were paid to ignore building code violations and speed up paperwork.
In July, the commissioner moved to fire a $91,008-a-year plumbing inspector caught doing a side job with no permit, no city license and without signing a secondary employment form.
Monocchio also terminated a $66,556-a-year project manager accused of accepting a fee to provide expert testimony as part of a lawsuit between two outside parties, in violation of the city’s ethics ordinance, which prohibits employees from soliciting and receiving money for their advice.
Acting Inspector General Mary Hodge could not be reached.
Clint Krislov, the attorney bringing the lawsuit against the City of Chicago and State of Illinois on behalf of taxpayers over its 75-year parking meter privatization deal is not the only lawyer acting in the public interest applying heat to the sweetheart arrangement.
The office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is also conducting its own investigation into the “transaction and implementation” of the deal, even as the office represents the state in the Krislov lawsuit, brought on behalf of IVI-IPO. Clout City reporter Mick Dumke reports:
The suit, filed last month, alleges that the meter deal is illegal because it uses taxpayer money to benefit a private company, delegates police power to the private firm, and restricts the City Council’s ability to set parking policy in the future. Click here to read a PDF of the original complaint.
Most of the suit’s charges were against the city, but it also named the offices of the Illinois comptroller and secretary of state, saying that they didn’t have the right to use public funds to strip anyone of driving privileges as a result of tickets issued at privatized meters. The purpose of Friday’s hearing was to determine if the plaintiffs had grounds to sue the state officials, and Judge Richard Billik answered with a yes and no: the suit could proceed, but he removed the secretary of state as a defendant because it technically wouldn’t be the office to spend any of the money at issue.
Illinois businessman and one-time controller of Rod Blagojevich’s campaign fund Christopher Kelly, who recently plead guilty to charges of receiving illegal kickbacks for work done at O’Hare Airport was found dead this morning by his family in his home.
Kelly, 51, was expected by some to flip on his former boss and testify against him in the disgraced former Governor’s upcoming corruption trial, as is also expected of former Blagojevich Chief of Staff John Harris.
Blagojevich, reportedly on the road promoting his new book, unsuitably tilted The Governor has not been named as a suspect in the death of Kelly. At press time, local security consulting and bodyguard firms are taking no chances by sending salespeople to every John Harris they can find in the state.
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