(Chicago, IL) – August 3, 2010. The Chicago parking meter privatization issue that has bedeviled Mayor Richard Daley since its controversial inception shows no signs of abating any time soon.
The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times are working on additional parking meter stories intended to embarrass the mayor and a local attorney may be preparing a lawsuit against the city on behalf of consumers “victimized” by the meters.
Both Tribune reporter Joseph Ryan and Sun-Times reporter Fran Spielman are seeking records from City Hall on parking meter revenue generated before the privatization and after. Spielman is looking for revenue data one year prior to the 75-year lease deal with Chicago Parking Meters LLC. Ryan wants the data going back to 2005.
Spielman is also seeking information from Daley’s administration on parking tickets issued by the meter vendor since city authorized the company to resume ticketing violations.
Meanwhile, Daniel Edelman, a class action attorney with Edelman, Combs Latturner & Goodwin, is asking Daley’s Department of Revenue for records from February 2009 through the present regarding complaints lodged with the city over inaccurate meters. Edelman’s legal career has been focused on consumer class action lawsuits.
In addition to a raft of potential damaging meter stories coming from both papers, the city could be facing a meter lawsuit, too. Oy.
The unpopularity of the parking meter deal is reflected in a new Chicago Tribune poll which reported last month that “[f]our out of five voters surveyed disapprove of Daley’s handling of the parking meter lease.”
More bad meter news will only complicate a campaign next year for a seventh term should Mayor Daley decide to run again. However, all signs point to another run for the fifth floor.
In the meantime, with fresh meter assaults potentially coming, Daley may have no safe quarter to spare him the grief–much like city residents who too are short of spare quarters.
Gov. Pat Quinn
Of course, everyone hates taxes and fees. And it is obvious that there is a disparity between what the city thought it would collect and what it has collected.
But I don’t think this was a result of negligence. One of the problems is the class action lawyers themselves, as a class. They only go where they think there will be substantial fees. So I suggest the City of Chicago retain the best class action lawyer of them all, Jammes Sloan, and let him be the guide on how to operate with the rest of the high class (pun intended) bottom feeders.
The biggest problem we have is what we’d do without Daley. The idea that Scott Waguespack, for example, could lead us through this set of probolems is ridiculous. That’s enough for now.
Posted by Philip Krone | August 4, 2010, 10:10 AMPhil,
The other problem is what we would do with Daley.
DO
Posted by David Ormsby | August 4, 2010, 11:00 AM