- Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media
- Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he “reformed” the parking meter deal, but city drivers continue to pay millions of dollars a month to the private meter company.
As Mayor Rahm Emanuel searches for money to cope with the city’s grave financial health, the private firm that controls Chicago’s parking meter system collected another $131 million from city drivers in 2014 to wrap up its most lucrative year yet, according to a financial audit posted Tuesday on the city’s website.
While 2014 revenues from the meter system dipped by about $5 million from the year before, the settlement with the city helped CPM boost its net operating income to almost $45 million, the highest since it bought the meters.
In case you’ve forced yourself to forget how the city ended up in this fix, the tale started in 2008, when former mayor Richard M. Daley quietly negotiated the meter selloff behind closed doors, then rammed it through the City Council in two days. Even mayoral loyalists objected to the speed of the rubber-stamping, but aldermen approved the deal anyway by a 40-5 vote.
The meter deal remained an albatross for candidates down to the ward level. In the Second Ward—which was redrawn and moved miles away to make life harder for incumbent alderman Bob Fioretti, who joined the mayoral race instead—the top two candidates battled to portray themselves as fiercer critics of the meter deal.
