Do Not Give This Man

Your credit card number.

So it turns out that pretty much everything informed observers thought stank to high Heaven about Metergate actually does stink to high Heaven, with each individual component of the scandal contributing it's own, special reek.

A snip from the Sun Times (emphasis added):

City could have gotten nearly $1 billion more for parking meters, report says

June 2, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters were worth nearly twice as much as the $1.15 billion Mayor Daley got when he rammed through a 75-year lease in a few days without analyzing what the system was worth, the city’s inspector general has concluded.

A steep schedule of rate hikes and operational problems ranging from over-stuffed and improperly calibrated downtown meters to broken pay-and-display boxes have turned the deal into a nightmare for motorists.

But Inspector General David Hoffman says the lease was a financial disaster as well.

After a five-month analysis, Hoffman has reached the “conservative” conclusion that Chicago Parking Meters LLC paid the city $974 million less than the system would have been worth to the city if it raised rates by the same amount and kept the meters for the next 75 years.

...

A 30-year lease with rate hikes 25 percent lower than those tied to the lease would have produced as much as $396 million, the report states.

“The bottom line is, there was no outside, independent consideration of whether it was a good idea to do this,” Hoffman said Tuesday, arguing that the City Council is “at fault for this as well.”

“If you’re getting a low-ball offer, maybe you still sell because you need the money. But, they didn’t even figure out what the comparative number was.”

Apparently aware that Hoffman was prepared to lower the boom, Daley launched into a vigorous defense of the parking meter lease before the inspector general’s report was even released.
…

So if I have this straight, the deal Da Mare cut was to pawn something you already owned for half of what it was worth, to a company that then turned right around and quadrupled the price for a shittier version of something that was working just fine to begin with.

Welcome to Chicago!

Hate to say I told you so, but…

Which still leaves the sticky problem of the City being broke.

Well, not really broke-broke -- after all, there are still boondoggle projects humming along as if the City's coffers were still overflowing, and Da Mare is still sitting on half a billion or so in tax increment finance dough that no one within earshot of him is allowed to mention aloud -- but the City is on-paper broke enough to bully the unions into bending over a little further and scare the last little bit of independence and spine out of everyone else who draws a city check.

So they needses monies, Precioussses. They neeeedses it!

And given the rather, oh, let's call it "tempestuous" relationship Da Mare's Administration has always had with transparency and ethics, don't be too surprised when this email arrives in your in-box sometime next week:

Dearest One.

My name is Richard M. Daley and I am the complete Mayor of the grate city of Chicago in the America.

As a resulting of a series of saddening event which were not of my own, I am in posession of items of grate value perhaps even the many millions of dollars in value.

This money which is divided up and concealed in many metallic boxes of a company here in Chicago.

Due to the instruction I laid down before I made distribution of the boxes, there is now needed maximum security/safety of my consignment and no body nor overnment organization can trace the where about of the box until I am rady and prepare to claim it.

For this reason the Counsell of Alderman used their many skills to send the money boxes out the streets in Chicago to Hall of the City where they have their underground secrete vault.

This deposit was coded under a secret arrangement as a family treasure. This means that the ecurity company does not know the content of this trunk box that was sent from the Chicago under speacial arrangement of coverage for safe keeping. My main purpose of sending you this mail is because of the way I found you and perhaps trustworthy to give you this priority of shipping the boxes of money to any address that you think is very secure and save in your country with your percentage of which we shall chat on soon.

In fact, since the budget crisess, many have been seriously chasing me around with constant treats including the reporters of news, trying to suppress me so that they might have the documents of this valuable properties and confiscate them. They have uccessfully collected many other Chicago properties, yet they never stopped there, they told me to surrender all bank account and lay people off which I did, but I never disclose to them this deposit with the security company of which we spoken of, because this is where my destiny lies upon. The villans are never aware of the secret existence of this deposit which I made with the security company and they can never be aware of it.

Out of fear for Da City, and when the situation becomes uncontrollable because of pressure on me from the Aldermean Counsel, I decide to look for a trustworthy person who could assist me retrieve these boxes of money from the security company for onward lodgement into his account for the purpose of future investment. consider now my situation as complete Mayor of the grate city of Chicago in the America and come to my rescue!

There is need for urgent action because I’m paying many dollars per day as a demurrage to the security company for safe keeping this consignment.

I give thanks immensely for your co-operation as I look forward to hear from you soon.

All the best,
Hizzonner Mare the Richard Daley