Illinois

to Morgan Stanley, together with Allianz Capital Partners and the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi for over a billion dollars. That's called PRIVATIZATION.

Immediately the cost of parking quadrupled (or more); places where no meters previously existed suddenly had them all over town; and they became enforced sometimes until 10 pm and some all night long.

What makes it worse is that Chicago makes zero dollars--nada--for the revenue from those meters. And we lost plenty of money on it:

The terms were negotiated in secret. City Council members got two days to study the billion-dollar, seventy-five-year contract before signing off on it. An early estimate from the Chicago inspector general was that the city had sold off its property for about half of what it was worth. Then an alderman said it was worth about four times what the city had been paid. Finally, in 2010, Forbes reported that in fact the city had been underpaid by a factor of ten.

http://www.thenation.com/article/privatizations-cutting-edge/

The timing of that sale was always suspicious. Sure, Chicago was already in fiscal trouble. But it was also in trouble with its bid with the IOC, because it pledged no taxpayer money and there was no government financial backing. To be in the running they needed to show there was some cash on hand.

Now we're broke.

It's not about the new ticket system. We could have upgraded that ourselves, raised the price of parking, and raked in big time revenues to support city services, including our schools. Now, we pay for parking all night long ($6.50 per hour in the Loop area). And because of the lost revenue, we lose services, and people suffer.

It was SOLD, for 75 years.