- Mayor Rahm Emanuel once bragged he’d made “lemonade out of a big lemon,” and would save taxpayers $1 billion over 71 years, when he settled reimbursement claims from the company leasing Chicago’s parking meters. But the retiring mayor may want to revise that statement after seeing results of the latest annual audit of the deal Chicagoans love to hate.
Chicago’s parking meter system raked in another $132.7 million in 2018, allowing private investors to more than recoup their entire $1.16 billion investment with 65 years to go on the 75-year lease. Four underground city-owned parking garages took in $34.1 million in 2018, while the privatized Chicago Skyway generated just under $99 million in cash, separate audits of those assets show.
Not a penny of those revenues, once a mainstay for city government, went to ease the $2 billion avalanche of tax increases imposed by Emanuel to solve the city’s pension crisis. That’s because all three assets were unloaded by former Mayor Richard M. Daley, who used the money to avoid raising property taxes while city employee pension funds sunk deeper in the hole.
It's far past time to tar-and-feather much of the City Council and hang more than a few of the retired asshole politicians.
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