What Mayor Daley Is Not Telling You About Balancing The Budget

Being the man of the people that you are, it's bit alarming that you suddenly have come to the realization that the economy has been rough on all us common folk.

Not surprisingly, all this sudden compassion for your constituency seems to coincidentally come after a series of political setbacks that have left you at the weakest moment of your political career. Hmmmm.

But, with all due respect Mr. Mayor, you're not fooling us.

You may not be raising any taxes, fines or fees, but you certainly have plans to increase enforcement.

We know your buddies over at the Dept. of Revenue are looking at an assortment of ways to improve enforcement productivity.  Or in other words, write us more tickets. We know LAZ's enforcement crews will start soon and add a minimum of 10% more enforcement staffing to the streets--with plans for even more to come. We know that booting enforcement is preparing to intensify.

City Hall insiders are sharing tips about plans to increase red light camera enforcement and/or increase "fine" amounts in covert ways, like the driving school fees Ald. Burke proposed earlier this year.

Since you're being so frank with your constituents lately, why not tell them yourself how you are going to screw them by not increasing fines, but increasing the total number of violations? Please tell them how you're expecting tens of thousands of additional parking tickets to be written in 2010. But honesty has never been your strong suit has it?

We also know your administration has done no long term financial planning. With just over a pathetic $250,000 in the official "rainy day" fund, even though you are refusing to admit it  and going even as far to hide this fact from your own City Council, we know you're going to have to tap into that precious Skyway and parking meter lease reserve funds you set aside for an emergency.

It's great to see, because of your finance department's great skill, the entire $1.16 billion from the 75 year parking meter lease deal, get sucked into your budget black hole in just a handful of years.

So Mr. Mayor, with all due respect of course, we don't appreciate your feigned sympathy for us common folk, when you have that baseball bat of enforcement gripped tightly in that hand behind your back.