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Chicago’s red tape problem

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Illinois

* This WTTW revelation is kind of nuts…

[Carmen Rossi’s] firm won a contract in February 2022 to operate parking lots on 13 properties owned by the Chicago Public Schools near the sports stadiums, including at 10 elementary schools and Lake View and Lincoln Park high schools.

But the firm was denied the business licenses it needed to operate those lots, prompting Rossi to send Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Commissioner Ken Meyer an email in March 2022 asking him to expedite the licenses.

Rossi’s firm got the licenses in June 2022, after the city’s municipal code was changed to allow private firms to operate parking operations on property owned by the Chicago Public Schools.

In 2022, Rossi was a registered lobbyist for four firms, but not for Chicago Parking Solutions, according to an online database of city lobbyists maintained by the Chicago Board of Ethics. Rossi has not registered as a lobbyist in 2023, records show.

In his response to the board, Rossi disputed that the email he sent to Meyer constituted lobbying, since Meyer did not have the authority to issue the business license his firm needed. Rossi also asserted he had a First Amendment right to communicate with city officials, whom he noted encouraged Chicagoans to reach out for help.

Let’s review…

2) Company owner sends email to city official asking him to expedite the license;

3) City official did not have the authority to issue business license;

4) City didn’t have a process for issuing the license, so it had to create one

5) Company owner winds up paying $5,000 fine to “resolve charges brought by the Chicago Board of Ethics” because the owner contacted a city official without being a properly registered lobbyist.

Carmen Rossi is a big guy who has been around a long while. He likely should’ve known better. But he does make a good point in the story: How in the heck are small business owners supposed to get by if they have to register as a lobbyist when they interact with the city on their own behalf?

Maybe this is a reform, but from a distance it sure looks like a reform masquerading as a full-employment mandate for paid lobbyists.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:34 am

Comments

“[Carmen Rossi’s] firm won a contract in February 2022…”
“…June 2022, after the city’s municipal code was changed to allow private firms to operate parking operations on property owned by the Chicago Public Schools.”
So did they award an illegal contract that was not allowed under the current municipal code?

Comment by Bruce( no not him) Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:42 am
===So did they award an illegal contract===

That’s kind of a harsh way of putting things.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:48 am
==Maybe this is a reform, but from a distance it sure looks like a reform masquerading as a full-employment mandate for paid lobbyists.==
No, that’s what it is. Good government advocates insist on reforms with no bearing on how they will play out because they define themselves oppositionally to “bad government,” or “the machine,” or “special interests.” Thus, most of these good government reforms get jiu jitsu’ed by bad actors to advance their bad actor-ness. If the Chicago press did not consist of left-wing student interns as journalists and the Chicago Tribune, this could have been prevented.

Comment by Nuke The Whales Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:48 am
“… but from a distance it sure looks like a reform masquerading as a full-employment mandate for paid lobbyists.”

The Illinois Way in a nutshell.

Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:51 am
“That’s kind of a harsh way of putting things”
Ok, How about
Did they award a contract to someone who wasn’t eligible to perform the contract?

Comment by Bruce( no not him) Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:52 am
Agree there should be a distinction between advocating for yourself or your own business, and being paid to advocate for someone else.

Overall this story is so Chicago…

Comment by Friendly Bob Adams Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:55 am
This is when “I know a guy” goes wrong for “the guy”

Comment by Oswego Willy Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 9:58 am
===This is when “I know a guy” goes wrong===

Meh. This when trying to get something supposedly easy done for your own company leads to a $5,000 fine.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:01 am
====Did they award a contract to someone who wasn’t eligible to perform the contract? ===

No. They awarded a contract without apparently realizing that the winner (any winner) couldn’t get a city license.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:02 am
Were there non-performance penalties in the contract? That would be hilarious.

Comment by MikeMacD Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:08 am
I started reading about this in a morning paper and stopped when I read this fellow was a “lobbyist”. I just assumed he was “lobbying a La Illinois” and I kinda had enough “lobbying the Illinois way” from reading the ComEd tales.
I really missed the actual issues in the story until I read Cap Fax- this happens a lot.
Good Cap Fax review and thinking @Anyone Remember and OW really summed up the story.

Comment by Back to the Future Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:16 am
So business owners/managers/whatever can’t interact with city officials in Chicago unless they register as lobbyists?

Comment by historic66 Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:21 am
I’m surprised the feds haven’t indicted him. /snark/

Comment by JoanP Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:30 am
I obviously don’t understand the Chicago bidding rules.

Comment by Bruce( no not him) Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 10:51 am
Crimea River.

Comment by Three Dimensional Checkers Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 12:16 pm
Rossi actually makes a decent point here. That ordinance, as amended, is overly broad and poorly written. How is it lobbying when you own the entity or are an attorney doing legal work?

Comment by Boone's is Back Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 12:21 pm
I will always remember the smooth jazz playing in the background during my lengthy conversations with Mr. Richard Superfine trying to understand the boundaries of the city’s lobbying laws.

Comment by CLJ Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 1:00 pm
=CLJ…”smooth jazz playing in the background during lengthy conversations with Mr. Richard Superfine= Superfine is the best brain in the biz.

Comment by Observing Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 1:43 pm
==smooth jazz playing in the background during my lengthy conversations with Mr. Richard Superfine==

Sounds like his name alone would give him a great weekend job as a smooth jazz radio DJ, if 95.5 in
Chicago still had their longtime former smooth jazz format.

Comment by Stuck in Celliniland Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 3:19 pm
100%. This is ridiculous. First, imagine you get awarded a contract, and the awardee says “you can’t start the work until you get a city biz license”. They can’t help and tell you to get what you need from the city.

You go to the BACP that issues biz licenses to find out what the status is because you can’t even move forward until you obtain some license that you didn’t even know that you needed. And then BACP admits the required license type doesn’t even exist and council has to pass an ordinance to create it.
Show me what Rossi did wrong here? He can’t even find out what’s the status of a license is?

The board of ethics is basically saying to every small biz owner, get yourself a lobbyist because we might decide that your simple inquiry constitutes lobbying. This needs to change.

Comment by Shytown Tuesday, Apr 25, 23 @ 3:49 pm