As expected, the full City Council signed off on Mayor Daley’s plan to lease the city’s parking meters to an assortment of private interests led by Morgan Stanley. Since word of the deal first emerged—a whole three days ago—the dramatic fee hikes that will result have pissed off people around the city.

But as annoying, and potentially burdensome, as they are, they’re not half the story. A few other points worth reiterating:

·        This is the second time in two months that the city has leased—for the better part of a century—a revenue-generating, publicly owned asset to a for-profit entity. And before the meters and Midway Airport, the city handed off the Skyway and downtown parking garages. More of these agreements appear to be on the way.

·        No hearings were held to gather public input on any of the deals.

·        The City Council took less than a week to examine and consider the meter deal—as with the one for Midway.

·        The only financial analysis offered to the City Council or to the public was the one provided by the Daley administration.

·        City officials told aldermen this week that they haven’t determined the names of individuals behind many of the interests making up the bid-winning partnership, known as Chicago Parking Meters LLC.

·        The administration has not released the number or names of any of the meter lease bidders except for the winner, nor the figures they bid.

·        Chicago Parking Meters LLC will have “supplemental enforcement” power—that is, the authority to write parking tickets. The city will keep the money from ticket payments.

·        The city still has the right to remove meters or even lower rates, but it would have to return some of the money.

·        As a matter of sustainable public policy, experts say it’s a wise idea to tax driving—if the money is going to be invested in alternative forms of transportation. This money isn’t.

·        Much of the $1.2 billion from the deal will be spent in the next few years:

o       City officials say $400 million will be set aside to cover the revenue the city will lose by turning over control of the meters; if this money collects 5 percent interest, it will produce $20 million annually, which is about what the meters now generate. But this assumes a consistent interest rate and doesn’t take into account the gains in revenues the city could reasonably expect by raising meter fees between now and 2084.

o       $325 million will go toward balancing city budgets through 2012.

o       $100 million will go into a “human infrastructure fund” that will help pay for existing social programs.

o       $324 will be poured into a “budget stabilization fund”—also known as a “rainy day fund.”

Wednesday’s meeting of the City Council’s Committee on Finance had a single item on the agenda: consideration of an ordinance that would give a private company 75 years of profits from Chicago’s parking meters for $1.17 billion in cash.

But more than 10 minutes of the meeting passed before a couple of aldermen interrupted testimony from city officials to ask if they could have copies of the ordinance [PDF].

It’s fair to say that the administration wants quick approval of the deal. And the council appears to be ready to do its part—the committee sent the ordinance to the full council even though even many of its usual go-along-to-get-mine members felt pushed around, taken for granted, and, perhaps worst of all, politically exposed.

Or, as 27th Ward alderman Walter Burnett put it, supporting the ordinance is kind of like taking erectile dysfunction medication: “It’s good on the one hand, but on the other hand it can cause some blindness and some other things that can happen to you.”

In this case, Burnett went on to explain, the “side effects” amounted to heat he and his colleagues were likely to take from angry voters who will have to pay four times as much to park in a metered spot.

“We leave here, and our home is around our constituents," Burnett said to Paul Volpe, the city’s chief financial officer. "They have homes near us, they’re in our churches, they’re in our stores, and we have to live with that.”

Naturally, this being the Chicago City Council, there were plenty of Daley administration cheerleaders who helped make the case that, timeframe be damned, this is simply too great a deal to pass up.

“Let me ask you this question,” James Balcer, alderman of the 11th Ward, said to Volpe. “Is there anywhere else we can get $1.17 billion?”

“Not today,” Volpe said.

“Not today,” Balcer said. “Nowhere else we can get a billion.”

And that’s why most aldermen have no choice but to sign off on this deal: they need the money.

They may—and did, and will—complain that the timeframe for finalizing it is ridiculously fast, that they’re not being respected as legislators, that parking rate hikes will penalize the residents and businesses in their wards, that the city is selling off too many assets, that the entities taking control of the meters may not be unionized and aren’t registered in Illinois and have an amazingly complicated ownership structure and may have historic ties to slavery and appear to represent everything wrong with Wall Street …

But the administration can answer it all by noting that the council essentially agreed to the lease deal last month when it passed the 2009 budget, complete with a $150 million hole that has to be filled somehow. If not with proceeds from a meter lease, then what?

“Significant tax increases,” Volpe said.

No one wants that. And no one has other ideas, so the administration is able to present this as an either-or: this deal or tax hikes. Or, if you want to think outside the box, cuts to things like heating assistance to the poor.

“This is certainly short order,” 29th Ward boss Ike Carothers barked at Volpe Wednesday. “Briefings yesterday, after a quick call, and I couldn’t attend because it was called ad hoc. And now finance today, and the full City Council tomorrow. What is the urgency?”

A delay in finalizing the deal could cost the city millions of dollars, Volpe said, because interest rates could rise above the historic low point they’re at now. He added: “We’ve been working on this transaction for about a year, so this has not been a hasty transaction on our part.”

“So what you’ve been working on in a year you want us to vote on in two days.”

“We had discussions about this transaction throughout the budget,” Volpe said. “In fact, so much so that we passed a budget that relies on $150 million from this transaction. So I would just point that out.”

Carothers, like several other critics of the deal, left the meeting before it was over. 

Earlier today the city's Department of Law handed aldermen copies of the accompanying flow chart (click on it to make it bigger) to provide them with some "clarity" on what business entities would be assuming control of the city's parking meters under a proposed $1.17 billion privatization deal.

Needless to say, it didn't exactly clear things up. 

"Can anyone understand this chart?" finance committee chairman Ed Burke asked his colleagues. No hands went up, though it was eventually suggested that various Morgan Stanley entities appear to have the largest stake. A few minutes later another alderman dropped a copy of the chart in front of me. Across the top he'd written "CLARITY."

Of course, the committee still ended up signing off on the ordinance [PDF] that authorizes the deal. More on how and why shortly.

We know it'll cost more to park on major city streets, and lots of minor ones as well. What's not certain is whether the parking meter lease deal is good one for taxpayers. The mayor and his administration argue that it is; next the city council will have the chance to weigh in. But the whole billion-dollar agreement could be wrapped up as soon as Thursday morning--just three days after city officials first viewed the bids on it. Here's the timeline of the deal:

Friday, February 8, 2008: The city issues an RFQ inviting firms to bid on leasing the meters. Chief financial officer Paul Volpe says it's a way "to be innovative in our approach to managing city assets." Final bids are due December 1.

February-March: City officials review initial application information submitted by potential bidders to determine whether the firms are qualified. The city won't say how many bidders were rejected, how many were accepted, or how many were involved altogether; that won't be released until the deal is approved and underway.

Thursday, August 14: Volpe announces that the city faces a $420 million budget deficit. The figure grows to nearly $500 million in the coming weeks as revenues from real estate transfer taxes dry up. 

Wednesday, October 8: Less than a week after most aldermen were first briefed on it, the City Council votes 49-0 to approve the Daley administration's $2.5 billion deal to lease Midway Airport.

Wednesday, October 15: Mayor Daley releases his 2009 budget, which he hopes will be balanced, despite the city's "financial challenges," with hundreds of layoffs, service reductions, cash from the Midway deal, and an anticipated $150 million infusion from a parking meter lease deal.

Wednesday, November 19: The City Council approves the administration's budget, with some line-item changes, by a 49-1 vote.

Monday, December 1: It's the due date for the lease bids, and even though city officials are supposed to be looking at them all for the first time, they move quickly to establish that a deal's in place. "We open the envelopes and the winning bidder is the highest bidder," budget department spokeswoman Lisa Schrader explained later. Of course, the City Council needs to sign off before any agreement goes into effect. Early in the work day--at 8:34 a.m.--a staffer for 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke, chairman of the City Council's Committee on Finance, submits an agenda [PDF] to the city clerk's office for the committee's December 3 meeting. It has one item on it: consideration of the parking meter lease deal. At 3:03 p.m. the clerk's office receives a letter [PDF] from Mayor Daley calling a full meeting of the council for December 4 "for the sole purpose" of taking up the lease deal. Also that afternoon officials begin leaking news of the deal to City Hall reporters and Mayor Daley calls a press conference for the next morning to provide details.  

Tuesday, December 2: Daley, Volpe, and other city officials announce a spinoff of Morgan Stanley, which in 2006 leased the city's downtown parking garages, will pay the city $1.15 billion in return for 75-year control of the parking meters. Rates will start going up in 2009 and may climb to more than $6 an hour within five years. 

Wednesday, December 3: The Finance Committee will meet at 10 a.m. If precedent is any indication, aldermen will have questions but the deal will be approved. 

Thursday, December 4: The full council will meet to consider the lease deal. Same deal with precedent. Some aldermen will probably wonder, as they have before, if the city will find anything to lease in 2009, given that Daley has predicted $200 million deficits for each of the next several years.

The city of Chicago may have enough salt for the winter, but that doesn't mean it will have enough money. 

The recently passed 2009 budget allocates a little more than $17 million for snow and ice removal, a drop of about $1.5 million, or 8 percent, from 2008. It's the smallest winter cleanup budget since 2004.

Of course, that's not a complete picture, since the labor and administrative costs of dealing with snow and ice are buried in other parts of the budget, and not always the same ones year to year.

But it's fair to say the city is crossing its fingers for a milder winter than last. The divisions of the Department of Streets and Sanitation that provide workers to clear snow and ice will have about $6 million less to spend in 2009--which equates to lots of time on the job for employees who earn between $18 and $31 an hour.

One might dare to predict that the city would be eager to make up some of the difference by aggressively enforcing the no-parking tow zones along snow routes [PDF] and in other restricted areas ... but budget cuts and service slowdowns are even expected to hit this most unpopular but lucrative activity. The city estimates it'll end up towing about 137,250 vehicles in 2009, about the same as in 2008 but down from 145,551 in 2007 and 147,784 in 2006.

I'm always ragging about the city's lack of commitment to public school sports - except, of course, almighty basketball -- so it's good to point out a little good news from today's prep bowl: Loyola Academy 17, Lane: 0.

Yeah, the public school lost -- for the third year in a row and the eighth time in this decade, for those keeping score.

But you have to appreciate what the public league is up against when it comes to football. Publis schools have less money than the privates to spend on facilities, equipments, coaches, trainers, etc. And of course, the Catholic schools have no residency requirements, meaning they can openly cherrypick the best eighth graders from all over the Chicago area. The public schools can only take kids who live in Chicago or are clever enough to devise a phony address in the city (just kidding -- sort of).

I always root for the underdog and in this case, Lane put up a great fight. They were only down eight at the half. And it was still very much a game in the fourth quarter.

In fact, the whole game pretty much came down to one play late in the third quarter. Losing 8 to 0, Lane had the ball inside the Loyola 40. It was fourth and about ten; instead of punting or trying a long-shot field goal, Lane went for the first down. Quarterback Luis Negron made one hell of a run, twisting, turning, diving for that first down. I thought he had it. But, alas, he fell less than an inch short. 

Loyola took over on downs and marched down the field for the touchdown that put the game out of reach. 

Oh, well, see you on the basketball court. 

Whatever your feelings—whatever your understanding—of the various government bailouts under way or on the table, it should be increasingly evident that that the country’s economic problems are multilayered (that is, complicated as shit); and that rescuing various Fortune 100 firms may accomplish a lot of things, but it simply won’t do enough to help the millions of people and thousands of neighborhoods already devastated by job losses and foreclosures.

New Yorker writer Peter J. Boyer’s revealing and heartbreaking “Eviction,” the story of 90-year-old Addie Polk’s mortgage troubles in Akron, Ohio, illustrates why and how this is true, and puts it in sobering context: “By the end of June, there were 2.4 million homes in foreclosure or prolonged delinquency, accounting for 4.5 per cent of all mortgages in the country—the highest level ever recorded.”

Closer to home, the Chicago Rehab Network’s latest analysis finds that this city alone experienced 12,861 foreclosures from January through September, leaving some blocks on the south and west sides pockmarked with boarded-up buildings—and thousands of families forced to find other places to live in an already tight rental market. If you click on any of the monthly reports, you’ll see that some of the lenders doing the most foreclosing are also the ones asking for the most help from the taxpayers.

Not coincidentally, Chicago has at least 13,000 more unemployed people than it did in January. And that doesn’t include the people who’ve stopped looking for work.

Economists stress that the bank and lending bailouts are necessary to keep the credit markets from closing up. Without money to borrow, businesses can’t make investments that result in hiring people.

Makes sense. But I’ll state the obvious and point out that people need to work now, not just in a few months or years when loans come through. President Bush’s last stimulus plan—sending out checks—didn’t do much to get the economy moving; Barack Obama’s, whatever it ends up being, may not be the answer either, but something else has to happen.

Just before aldermen began debating the Daley administration’s 2009 city budget last Wednesday, Mayor Daley himself looked completely unworried about its fate as he stood in the lounge behind council chambers, telling stories and joking about state and national politics with a group of reporters.

He had reason to feel relaxed about the vote—aldermen ended up approving the budget 49-1, and even some of his frequent critics went out of their way to praise his leadership during rough economic times.

Of course, before voting aye, they also complained and worried aloud for a couple of hours—and nothing seemed to bug them as much as the much-panned new levies on alley Dumpsters.

One alderman after another stood and said the new fees—which would run between $80 and $780 a year for each Dumpster—would be passed on from waste haulers to their customers, thus amounting to an onerous tax on commercial and large residential buildings during an economic downturn. “I have a major problem with the Dumpster tax,” 41st Ward alderman Brian Doherty said in a typical assessment. “It could really hurt smaller businesses.”

But that wasn’t enough to keep Doherty or any of the others from voting to approve it. Doherty noted that the tax wasn’t scheduled to go into effect until April, and he hoped that before then it would be amended or scrapped by a new subcommittee that Ed Burke had promised to form (in a late-hour maneuver designed to get budget skeptics on board, though Doherty didn’t mention that part).

While others made similar arguments, alderman Helen Shiller, of the 46th Ward, went even further, arguing that the subcommittee shouldn’t limit its scope to the Dumpster tax. “Unless we include in this discussion the importance of reusing our waste, making sure that as much as possible of it is recycled, looking at how necessary it is, how it’s impacted, how people are actually doing it, how we can do it better than we’ve been doing it, unless we look at the markets for it, we cannot see the whole picture.”

None of her colleagues responded directly to her remarks, and in an interview, Shiller said she was frustrated that more political and business leaders don’t see how the city’s garbage is tied to its economic future as a potential capital of a green economy. “We are uniquely situated in the city of Chicago—we have the knowledge base, we have the transportation systems, we have the land, and we have the financing potential,” she said. “Think about what would happen if we just looked at the reuse of glass. One problem we have right now is that restaurants and businesses say no one wants to take anything [to recycle] but paper. But if we can create a business that uses glass, we can create jobs that won’t go away.”

Shiller speaks from more than enthusiasm—more than a year ago she helped launch a pilot program in her ward aimed at increasing recycling in a variety of high-density residential buildings, which are served by private-sector waste haulers. She said most of the buildings that participated—20 formally, dozens of others informally—dramatically improved recycling rates and saved money on garbage collection because their recyclable “waste” ended up being valuable. The keys to collecting it efficiently were getting building managers and waste haulers to work through logistical problems such as where the recyclables should be stored, then making sure building staff and residents were educated about the process. “It’s an issue of creating the demand, being a catalyst, and getting people to do it,” Shiller said.

She and First Ward alderman Manny Flores recently proposed an ordinance requiring developers to create space for recycling collection in any new residential building with more than six units. And in a few weeks, she said, she hopes to share a “tool kit” with other high-density buildings around the city to help them replicate what’s worked in her ward. “People keep saying to me, ‘Why isn’t the city doing this?’ Well, the city’s never going to do it.” The city should require and enable people, she says, but they're going to have to do it themselves.

Markets for recyclable commodities have dropped in recent weeks because demand for the materials from Asian manufacturers has sunk—which is itself a result of Americans buying less stuff. Shiller said that’s why Chicago needs to create more businesses that use the commodities right here. She also notes that landfill space in Illinois is declining, and the cost of trucking garbage to landfills depends with the price of fuel.

All of which leads back to the debate on the Dumpster fee. In a sense, it should encourage recycling, since only garbage bins will be taxed; some aldermen have even been making this argument publicly. But its primary purpose is to create short-term revenue for the city—an estimated $9 million next year.

Over the summer, the city proposed a radical reorganization [PDF] of the city’s private waste collection system and trumpeted the new plan's environmental benefits. Shiller said she’s not opposed to the idea, since it’s her understanding that similar waste franchising systems have worked in smaller cities and suburbs. “I understand the desire to lesson the impact on our alleys, and to find efficiencies,” Shiller said. “But the other reason it got pushed out so quickly was that it was seen as a revenue source.”

But Chicago officials announced their plan before they’d sold political or business leaders on it, and it didn’t go over well—at all. The city withdrew the plan pending further discussion.

“That’s how we ended up with the fee on Dumpsters,” Shiller said. 

Playwriting isn't a craft I normally associate with Chicago politicians, particularly ones like Jay Paul Deratany, a personal injury lawyer whose political ambitions are very much alive. In February, he unsuccessfully ran for the Board of Review, the county's property tax appeal body; now he's talking about running for Rahm Emanuel's open Fifth Congressional District seat.

Politicians generally have to watch what they say, and a candidate involved in entertainment runs the risk of alienating voters, as Al Franken discovered when some of his old comic bits were used against him in his Minnesota senatorial campaign.

"I don't know if writing a play will help or hurt my political career," says Deratany. "But I didn't write it thinking about my career."

The play--Haram Iran--isn't about Chicago politics, property taxes, or personal injury law. It's not even set in Chicago. Taking place in Iran, it tells the sad story of two teenagers named Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari.

In 2005, Marhoni and Asgari were charged with raping a 13-year-old boy and sentenced to hang. In the aftermath of their execution, a debate erupted over whether the boys actually raped anyone or were, instead, put to death because they were caught having consensual sex. For his part, Deratany believes the rape charges were concocted and that the case represents a gross violation of human rights standards. 

Deratany says he found himself drawn to the story last winter in the days following his loss to Joseph Berrios in the race for a seat on the Cook County Board of Review. "After that election, I needed a break from politics for a while," he says. "I happened to see a story on the Internet about Ayaz and Mahmoud. There was some video of them."

It was a video that showed the boys locked in a cage. "I watched it and bawled my eyes out," he says. "I started reading up on the case. I was reading everything. And then I started writing."

It was not his first play. "I wrote a comedy called Two Grooms and a Mohel. I'd rather not talk about that--I don't think it was that good. I'm prouder of this play."

By the spring he had finished a draft, which he showed to David Zak, artistic director for the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. "I'd known Jay for a long time," says Zak. "The script impressed me. I told him he had something here. It was a very moving story. It was timely--he has an ear for dialog."

The play is told from the point of view of the mother of one of the boys. "I was looking for a way to make the story universal," says Deratany. "Yes, it's about two boys accused of committing a homosexual act. But it's not a 'gay play.' It's a human rights play."

Haram Iran is running at the Athenaeum Theatre through December 9. 

Among the 49 aldermen who voted in favor of Mayor Daley’s hard-times 2009 budget were a couple dozen who delivered impassioned and often defensive speeches explaining their support. And within this group were a few aldermen who also used the occasion to share a few thoughts about pet issues, from problems with education funding (Sixth Ward alderman Freddrenna Lyle) to the perils of abandoned homes (33rd Ward alderman Richard Mell) to the necessity of firefighters (29th Ward alderman Ike Carothers). But no one made a more vehement, controversial, or interesting appeal than Howard Brookins Jr. did when he stood up and renewed his years-long call for help in bringing a Wal-Mart to the 21st Ward [PDF].

“Out of all the retail stores, all of their profits are down except for Wal-Mart, whose third-quarter profits are up 10 percent,” Brookins said. He noted that Wal-Mart stores are thriving in suburbs that border on Chicago and cited studies estimating that tens of millions of dollars in spending and potential tax revenues were “leaking” out of the city. “Six hundred people could be employed right there in my community. Six hundred people!” he said. “As the economic times get worse, we will continue to see an increase in crime, and it’s already happened in a lot of our wards—we’ve seen an increase in garage burglaries; we’ve seen an increase in stick-ups and robberies. Until that trend turns around it’s unfortunate that we’re going to have to brace for the worst. But we can stop or prevent a little bit of that leakage.

“Had that Wal-Mart passed in our ward the city would have had an additional $21 million, by my estimate, by today’s date. Sixty-four million dollars would be spent with union tradesmen–plumbers, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, right now, when the city of Chicago is experiencing a 29 percent decrease in commercial building starts.

“There’s been an unprecedented spirit of cooperation with the unions and the city to come up with new ideas so we would not have to lay off a bunch of city workers. I implore you to come up with that same creative idea, with labor and Wal-Mart, so that we can put people to work. Unfortunately this train is not going to turn around anytime soon, and the only sure bet I know in the 21st Ward to employ 600 people immediately is that retail store who still wants to come to the 21st Ward in the city of Chicago.”

The reaction to his remarks was minimal—except for Mell, who followed up with an appeal for a casino, and powerful finance committee chairman Ed Burke, who said Wal-Mart workers should be able to organize, no other aldermen responded on the floor. In an interview later, Brookins said a few others approached him afterward and complimented him. He's now thinking about talking with the potential developers of the project and, if they're on board, introducing a new request for approval in the council.

“I’ve been quietly talking to my colleagues about it, and in this economic climate I think the votes are there," he said. "Even if they’re not there, I may put it forward and let people know who’s against jobs. I mean, when we were fat and happy, that was one thing. But now?”

Still, Brookins said, he first wants to work with organized labor to try to work out solutions. “Maybe we can come up with a compromise,” he said.