CHICAGO WATER NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR MAYOR SAN PELLEGRINO?

9/12/13

Yesterday’s (i.e., Wednesday, 9/11/13’s, page 22) Chicago Sun-Times featured an article by Dan Mihalopoulos highlighting the retirement of Chicago City Council Sergeant-at-Arms Christina Pacheco Butler.   Mrs. Butler, a longstanding fixture in the 33^rd Ward Regular Democratic Organization, was a patronage hire of Alderman Dick Mell and has held her current Council job for ten years.   According to the way the city works, now that Mr. Mell has retired, his patronage hires have to go or find another, to use the perhaps insensitive descriptive terms of another era, Chinaman or rabbi.  Mrs. Butler has apparently elected to retire.  However, given her still quite tender age (62) and her feisty demeanor, one suspects that she will not be retired for long.

Mrs. Butler, from Mr. Mihalopoulos’s account, seems to be an effective and well liked sergeant-at-arms.   She does her job well, has the respect of the Council and the mayor, takes no guff from anyone, and (usually; see below) knows how to keep her mouth shut when the situation so demands.   She is probably the equal of the fictional Jimmy McErlean, council sergeant-at-arms in my book The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics.  Further, Mrs. Butler is  living, breathing testimony that the patronage system, despite its many faults, is not the unmitigated evil its most vociferous critics would have us believe it is.   That having been said, one wonders why the post of city council sergeant-at-arms exists, or maybe one doesn’t wonder; it has everything to do with the aforementioned patronage system.  But I digress.

What captured my attention in the article was not so much the major story, but an aside.  Mrs. Butler says, not complaining, just pointing out, that she pays for the almonds and San Pellegrino water that Mayor Rahm Emanuel likes to snack on during city council meetings.

San Pellegrino water and almonds?!   What’s wrong with good old Chicago water, the Michigan cocktail that flows from our taps and that is the finest drinking water in the country, probably the world?  And who eats almonds that aren’t imbedded in a Hershey or World’s Finest bar or mixed into some delectable dish at a Chinese restaurant, usually involving chicken?

The next time I get blowback when accusing Mayor Emanuel of being a hopeless elitist yuppie with not a whit of empathy for the people in the neighborhoods, I will simply point out his snack preferences.  San Pellegrino and almonds indeed!

 See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

ALDERMAN REILLY WANTS TO BUY BACK CHICAGO’S PARKING METERS: “MY CREDIT GOOD ENOUGH TO BUY YOU OUT?”

5/14/13

42^nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, who represents the part of Chicago that would be most hurt by Mayor Emanuel’s proposed deal to swap free Sunday parking in the neighborhoods for extended meter hours primarily on the city’s near north side (See my 4/30/13 post, RAHM EMANUEL AND THE PARKING METERS:   “GOT TO MAKE THE BEST OF…A BAD SITUATION”), would like to junk the whole lousy parking meter deal negotiated by former Mayor Richard M. Daley in the twilight of his (too) long tenure as mayor.

Despite Mayor Emanuel’s factual, common sense objection to undoing the entire deal, to wit,

“We don’t have the money.  We spent it prior to my coming here.  We don’t have billions of dollars,”

Alderman Reilly insists that the city’s buying its way out of the deal with Chicago Parking Meters, LLC (“CPM”) is “within the art of the possible.”   In support of this argument, he contends that “municipal bond experts” have told him so.

Yours truly does not doubt for a minute that “municipal bond experts” would tell Mr. Reilly just about anything he wanted to here, and do the same for Mr. Emanuel, if it would help them get a piece of the billion dollar plus bond deal that would be necessary to finance a legal exit from the swamp into which Mr. Daley sunk the city.   Further, such a deal might be “within the art of the possible,” whatever that means.  But such a deal is not within the realm of the probable.   Since all but a relative few dollars of the $1.15 billion that the CPM deal raised was spent by Mr. Daley, the city has little equity to support such a bond deal; the city would have to borrow 100% of the funds necessary to buy out CPM.   That would be tough…and expensive…if it could get done at all.

Even if the city could somehow sell bonds to raise the money to buy CPM out of this bowser of a deal, what would be accomplished?   The city would borrow more than a billion dollars.  It would then give that money to CPM to take CPM out of the contract.  The city would then once again own its own parking meters.  But ALL the money raised from the meters would go toward servicing the bonds used to raise the money to pay off CPM.  The city thus would realize NO revenue from the meters for a very long time, probably for at least as long the 71 years of the existing CPM contract.   And, since such a massive amount of money would need to be raised, the city would not have the latitude to reduce meter rates.  Doubtless the same “municipal bond experts,” if they were being honest rather than merely hucksterish, told Mr. Reilly that the bonds would have to include covenants dictating no reduction, and probably increases, in meter rates in order to assure the necessary revenues to service the bonds.  So what would the city accomplish by buying itself out of the CPM contract?

Put another way…

As things stand now, parking meter revenues go directly to CPM under terms of the meter deal.   If a scheme to buy CPM out of the contract were somehow put together, the city would borrow the money by issuing bonds backed by meter revenues…and probably the full faith and credit of the city of Chicago, but the latter would be subject to negotiations.  All meter revenues would flow into an escrow fund to pay interest and principal on those bonds that were sold to pay off CPM.   So parking meter revenue would still flow to CPM, but instead of doing so directly it would flow through an escrow account to the bond holders who would be collecting, with interest, and probably substantial interest, the money they paid CPM.  

The money would still wind up in the same place, i.e., with CPM, but now the city would be paying millions and millions in additional interest.  And instead of just CPM getting rich, CPM and a slew of bond underwriting firms would be getting rich.   Such an arrangement doubtless would appeal to any Chicago politician; think of all the “campaign” funds that could be extorted from the underwriters getting fat on the citizenry’s dimes, or, more properly, quarters and dollars.   But, as usual, the people of Chicago would be handing money to people who know how to befriend politicians.  

Ain’t government grand…especially here in Chicago?

The Mayor is right; the city doesn’t have the money to buy itself out of this stinker of a deal.  The best that we can hope for is to loosen the noose just a bit, as Mr. Emanuel is trying to do, with at best limited success, in his efforts to modify the CPM deal.  Again, see my 4/30/13 post.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

“DOWNTOWN—YOU’RE GONNA BE ALRIGHT NOW”…AS LONG AS YOU DON’T HAVE TO PARK

4/19/13

Rarely do I get the chance to defend a tax, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and a Chicago alderman in the same post, but the proposed parking tax in my hometown has provided this once in a millennium opportunity.

The current parking tax in Chicago is on a sliding scale but ramps up quickly to a maximum of $5.00 on any parking charge of $12.00 or more.  That results in a top tax rate of 41.7%.   Mayor Emanuel would like to replace that onerous taxing scheme with a straight 20% during the week and 18% on weekends.   While this would result in a higher tax rate on some parkers, and increased parking tax revenue overall, the scheme is straightforward and clean, replacing a highly regressive tax with a flat tax.  It’s the type system we should use for our income tax at the national level, but that is grist for a later mill.

At the City Council Finance Committee hearings on the proposed parking tax scheme, Mr. Marc Gordon, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, argued against the tax, stating that the tax

“…has a severe impact on our hotels and overnight guests who stay there,”

who pay an average of $42.31 per night to park at a downtown hotel and can face charges as high as $50.00.

Wait a minute….

Mr. Gordon whines that charging a parking tax of $10.00 per night discourages people from staying downtown.  It’s hard to disagree with that contention; however, how about the $50.00 per night some hotels are charging?   That doesn’t discourage people from staying downtown?  If the hoteliers who have hired Mr. Gordon as their lobbyist were so concerned about disincentives to patronizing their places of business, perhaps they should consider the disincentive effects of the outrageous sums they are charging for parking.  

28^th Ward Alderman Jason Ervin had it just about right when he said

“Why is parking so high to start with?  The amounts I’ve seen in some of these hotels are just ridiculous.   That probably has (sic) a greater detriment.”

I say “just about” right because Alderman Ervin shouldn’t have included the adverb “probably” in the above statement; there is no doubt that the prices the downtown hotels charge for parking, and for rooms, provide a huge disincentive to stay downtown.  Doubtless Mr. Gordon and those who have employ him would like to avoid that topic altogether.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

IT’S NOT GARRY McCARTHY’S FAULT

2/24/13

The Chicago City Council’s Black Caucus is starting to put pressure on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fire Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.   According to 21^st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins, chairman of the Caucus

“If things don’t change and we get closer to the election, I won’t be able to stop my members from calling for his (McCarthy’s) head because the public is calling for our heads.  The clock is ticking on all of us.”

One can understand the frustration of Chicago’s residents, especially those who live in the areas hardest hit by crimes.  In January alone, 42 murders were committed in Chicago, the most in over ten years.   This came after a 16% jump in homicides in 2012.   Those of us fortunate to live outside what might be called, without too much exaggeration, the killing zone are perhaps a bit scared by the crime wave in the city and embarrassed at what it is doing to our city’s international reputation.   But those who live in the most affected areas are outright terrified, and they are letting their aldermen know it.

Superintendent McCarthy makes a convenient scapegoat for the problems afflicting this once, but now only in the eyes of its most fervent friends, great city.   But the convenient thing is usually not the right thing, and this is especially true in this case.   The problems behind the homicides are way beyond the control of Garry McCarthy.   Three of those reasons, in increasing degree of depth, come immediately to mind.

--Chicago doesn’t have enough cops and all the shifting of assignments and other sleights of hand engaged in by Superintendent McCarthy and Mayor Emanuel cannot change the arithmetic.  More police are retiring than are entering the police academy.  We cannot increase the number of new officers because the city is broke.   Chicago is broke because Mayor Daley spent the city into oblivion with grandiose plans apparently designed primarily to enrich those closest to him and perhaps ancillarily to benefit the city.   The externals were taken care of; the city looks beautiful, or at least better than it used to, in most places.  But beneath the surface, the city was rotting.  That rot manifested itself not only in the city’s deteriorating infrastructure but also in the neglect of basic services, like hiring enough police officers.  

Mayor Emanuel has done nothing, other than the aforementioned shell games with police assignments, to remedy the problem.   While he insists he will not raise taxes, he has no qualms about raising other fees, such as water bills and more ancillary items.    But the revenue goes elsewhere…to infrastructure in the case of the water bill increases but also to such trendy piffles as something called Choose Chicago with its ambiguous mission of promoting tourism; see my 2/21/13 piece CHOOSE CHICAGO…OR CHOOSE MORE POLICE OFFICERS?   Garry McCarthy cannot hire more police officers; only Mayor Emanuel can hire more police officers.

Chicago still has a higher ratio of police officers to population than New York or Los Angeles.   This suggests that some long term reforms are needed in the deployment of manpower.   But that is a long term issue; the city has to address the crime problem NOW.

--While not enough people mention it, at least not openly, Mayor Daley’s grand plan to tear down the high rise CHA public housing projects did more to increase crime in the city and the suburbs than anything else in the last ten or twenty years.   Mr. Daley trumpeted this plan as a kind of humanitarian gesture, freeing people from the grip of the often crime-ridden, run-down replacement slums that were the CHA projects.  One suspects, though, that the people who benefited most were friends of the Mayor in the real estate world, who wanted for development what had become the prime locations on which the projects sat.   

Whatever the motives, and whether or not the former public housing residents benefited from having their CHA apartments replaced with Section 8 vouchers, there is no doubt that the spreading throughout the city and suburbs of the criminal element that made life so miserable in the projects exacerbated crime throughout the city.    Areas that had formerly had relatively little criminal activity, especially black middle class neighborhoods like Chatham, are now having horrendous crime problems.   And nothing has improved, indeed, things have gotten worse, in areas like Englewood that have had crime problems for decades now.

At least when the projects were up and operating, crime was, to some extent, isolated and concentrated and could be more easily controlled by focused police details.   Now that crime has spread throughout the city, it is much more difficult to track and counter.   We are talking unpleasant trade-offs here, but trade-offs that indeed exist and must be considered.

--The Reverend Jimmy Daniels, a Chicago pastor who supports Superintendent McCarthy, said

“I’m 100% behind the superintendent.  The problems are the parents…absent parents.  The (City Council Black) caucus and the ministers need to stop blaming the mayor and the police superintendent.   The gun alone doesn’t shoot people.  People shoot people.”

Some might be quick to reject out of hand what Mr. Daniels and prefer to attack him as a pawn of the Mayor.  Yours truly thinks he might be too quick to exonerate the Mayor.  But all of us would do well to consider the wisdom of what Reverend Daniels is saying; when the family is broken, no politician or bureaucrat can have much impact on the problems that result.  

Scapegoating is easy.   When the team is losing, fire the coach.   When the business is losing money, fire the CEO.   When crime is up, fire the police superintendent.   But the appearance of action, in the form of scapegoating, often serves as a means of rationalizing not taking the much more difficult actions that have a chance of addressing the underlying problems.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.