Daley and the aldermen know very well where the “real” money comes from regarding the 1.4 million vehicles registered in Chicago. Parking tickets-$164 million, Red-light cameras-$40 million, City Stickers and Permits-$150 million. Add booting, towing, storage, drivers license suspensions and the revenue from the remaining city owned parking lots-$50 million plus. This comes to a whopping $400 million dollars per year. This is serious money, even for Mayor Daley and the aldermen.
So, what was Mayor Daley thinking? What was his internal dialogue?
I believe that he was saying to himself, if someone wants to pay me $1.157 billion for $20-$25 million in annual meter revenue and I’m not going to be the one who takes the heat for increased meter rates and I get to retain the $400 plus million per year in enforcement and fees. Hum, what should I do?
It took Mayor Daley, Bea Reyna-Hickey at the Department of Revenue and Alderman Ed Burke, the Finance Committee chairman about 2 seconds to make that decision. Daley simply didn’t care about the meter revenue. This would almost be funny if the citizens of Chicago weren’t the schlemiels paying for all this nonsense. I think that Daley violated the law of unintended consequences. Given his hubris, it never occurred to him that there would be such an ugly public back lash regarding this lease.