Another Voice: Chicago Mayor's Parking Meter Swindle Sold Out People To Morgan Stanley

Chicago Mayor's parking meter swindle sold out people to Morgan Stanley

By John Beacham

Join fight-back campaign to rollback parking meter rate hikes!

On Dec. 4, 2008, the City Council voted 40-5 to illegally sell the city's parking meters to Morgan Stanley. The vote was taken two days after the sale was made public and finalized. The full contract was not disclosed to the full City Council prior to the vote.

For a paltry sum of $1.15 billion (reasonable estimates put the actual worth of the deal at $5 billion), 36,000 meters were sold behind the backs of the people to the finance company for a period of 75 years.

The bank took possession of the meters Feb. 13. Under the agreement, Mayor Daley and the City Council have allowed LAZ, the company running the meters for the Wall Street giant, to raise parking fees up to 400 percent, increase meter hours and days and install thousands of new automated pay boxes. Morgan Stanley is planning to raise parking rates every year until 2013.

Widespread dissent and a grassroots boycott campaign--particularly sparked by a ticket-writing rampage by LAZ--have forced the issue out into the open. It has now come to light that the mayor's office, secretly working on the sale of the meters for two years, never seriously considered any other bidder except Morgan Stanley. Mayor Daley's nephew, William Daley Jr, is a Morgan Stanley executive.

The Chicago Park District is also raising parking meter rates, increasing meter hours and installing new meters and pay boxes.

The parking meters, a source of public revenue, collected on public streets, are meant to pay for city services. Now, they have been criminally turned over to a massive private financial institution. Los Angeles and Philadelphia have also pursued privatizing their parking meters.

During the worst economic crisis in a generation, while the failed banks are being rushed billion-dollar handouts and government-guaranteed loans, the mayor and the city are slashing services, laying off workers and making workers pay more for fees and services.

Outrageously, on June 18, Mayor Daley promised $4.8 billion in public money in the city's bid to win the contest to be the host city for the 2016 Olympics.

People over profits: Money for jobs and people's needs!

Under the Daley-brokered deal, billions of dollars will be stolen directly from workers' pockets and flow into hands of the bankers at Morgan Stanley. No politician should have the right to sell-off public property to profit-hungry corporations.

The sale of the parking meters is part of an all-out attack on workers in Illinois. Mayor Daley and Governor Quinn are planning to make billions of dollars in cuts to public services and lay off thousands of people. Badly needed health care and community services for the poorest and most oppressed workers are on the chopping block.

Money should be used to bail out workers and create jobs, not to swell the bank accounts of the rich class of owners.

Private companies, especially banks, by their very nature, put profits before people. By law, they must put the profit margin above all other concerns. Nearly all the capitalist politicians, as is clearly on display in the city's sale of the parking meters, put the needs of the rich over the majority.

The banks and their irrational system created the economic crisis. It is the banks that, unable and unwilling to lend in an unprofitable economic climate, are forcing the unnecessary layoffs of millions of people and directly kicking millions of people out of their homes. At the same time, Wall Street CEOs of bailed out companies continue to rake in millions of dollars in bonuses--all paid for by working people.

The banks should have to pay, not get paid for the increased suffering of millions of workers, especially workers in oppressed communities, facing the brunt of the economic crisis.

Let's Fight Back and Take Back the Meters! Join the Party for Socialism and Liberation in demanding the immediate rollback and end to the parking meter rate hikes.

To send a letter to Mayor Daley click here.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: John Beacham is the coordinator of ANSWER Chicago (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). As a grassroots activist, he has helped organize mass protests against the war and for equal rights in Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, St. Paul, Minn., and other cities.

Beacham has also been involved in dozens of local and national progressive campaigns for justice, including union solidarity and anti-Free Trade activities.

A managing editor of PSLWeb.org, Beacham has given presentations and published articles on a wide variety of political topics ranging from the U.S.-sponsored Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2007 to the Iraq War to the struggles against Illinois budget cuts.

In 2008, Beacham ran for Illinois State Assembly on the Green Party ticket as a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He is a community college teacher and member of the Harper Adjuncts union.

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