Chicago’s toxic political brew
Wednesday, Mar 25, 2009 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Most of the Chicago media focused on Mayor Daley’s awkward press conference yesterday where he kinda sorta apologized for the Al Sanchez conviction and dodged reporters’ questions about what he knew about illegal patronage hiring and when he knew it…
* Chicago Mayor Richard Daley Takes Questions from Reporters on Sanchez
* Daley on hiring fraud: ‘I am sorry’
* Clean it up, Mayor …
* Mayor Daley Deflects Questions Regarding Sanchez
* Brown: Still refusing to explain city patronage
* Politics Explained. The not so ‘accessible’ mayor
* Fitzgerald on Hiring Fraud: Don’t Trivialize the Harm
* But Carol Marin writes a second column this week about the humungous parking meter rates negotiated by Daley…
Your raging e-mails came roaring in after my Sunday column, in which I noted what you apparently noticed, too. That suddenly there are scads of empty metered parking s-p-a-c-e-s downtown where cars just a month ago were bumper to bumper. Could this, I asked, signal a citizen boycott, or was boycott too strong a word?
“Personally, I’m in full boycott mode,” replied a computer consultant who does business in the city. “I’ll stand on my head to . . . spare myself an onsite visit if street parking is involved.” […]
Mayor Daley was quoted in the Tribune a couple of days ago as saying, “Let’s not blame this new company. There will be complaints, but like anything else, they will get to those complaints.”
They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry, mayor.
She ended her column with this…
In 1979, lousy snow removal sparked a voter rebellion and booted a mayor.
Could parking meters be the new snow?
* CBS2 also has a report…
CBS 2 called the company, too; twice to New York, another to Chicago. They didn’t call back. We also called the city. They called back but basically said, ‘not our meters anymore, not our problem anymore.’
Enter a guy who calls himself ‘Mike The Parking Ticket Geek.’ He contacted us via Twitter and showed us his website, theexpiredmeter.com, which he used to give people advice on how to beat parking tickets. The site has become a lightning rod for peoples’ complaints about the new rates and operators.
Mike says the people who are writing to him have a sense of “anger, frustration, rage in some cases.”
To the point where some, it appears, are vandalizing the meters. Pictures on Mike’s website show meters deliberately smashed, taken apart, spray-painted, or deliberately jammed.
As I’ve written before, Chicago and Cook County voters are willing to put up with political shenanigans, but they’ve also demanded sound governmental decisions. That doesn’t seem to be happening any longer. High taxes, high fees, unresponsive, bloated and corrupt government are all combining into a toxic political brew.
But do you think it will make any difference?
Still, Bill Daley might wanna take this job offer rather than run statewide in such an environment…
• • To wit: Sneed hears rumbles [Bill] Daley may become the next U.S. ambassador to China.
• • The backshot: Daley, who has been eyeing a bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010, may be on President Obama’s short list for the ambassador’s post.
• • The upshot: If Daley decides not to run for the Senate, it provides a clearer track for state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who’s already formed an exploratory committee for the Senate race.
• • Postscript: Sneed also is told Daley is also planning to wed his fiancee, Bernie Keller, some time this spring.