Special thanks to Everitz Consulting for fixing up Chicago Clout. Our website uses movable type and Media Temple. We added Pay Pal to offset the need for a full time video investigator. We need every Chicago City employee to take pictures of any bosse’s car that is missing m-plates. Daley and his goons have given regular plates to many clout heavy bosses so it is more difficult to watch them use the cars for personal use. If you have furlough days and are a current Chicago employee, we will need your assistance to help our investigator monitor bosses in and out of major plants like Streets and Sanitation and the Jardine Plant. We must save the City of Chicago taxpayers from Commissioners using City vehicles for politics and personal use. We must install GPS and throw these goons in jail. Chicago is on the brink of bankruptcy, save your city and rat these thieves out to us. Your identity will be kept confidential. Let’s help the Office of the Inspector General during these tough times. Thanks, Patrick McDonough.
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From NBC 5: We were only joking the other day when we suggested we’ll soon have to start feeding our water meters every 15 minutes just like the parking meters to help make up for the budget shortfall.
But the truth is that privatizing the city’s water system – that is, leasing it to a private party a la the parking meters in exchange for an upfront bundle of cash – is an idea that’s coming around again.
Daley told the Chicago Tribune editorial board this week that he recently met with consultants about future privatization deals and that “everything is on the table,” including reviving his stalled attempt to lease Midway Airport and, yes, leasing the city’s water system.
Daley wouldn’t say whether he wants to go forward with the water plan – rumored for years – because he didn’t want to stir up controversy at a time when his budget proposal is already in the spotlight.
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Of course, if Daley wasn’t interested in privatizing the city’s water, there would be no controversy. So in his own elliptical way, he answered the question.
A public leery of asset leases in the wake of the parking meter fiasco would be one impediment, but a larger one to Daley would be the union representing water department personnel.
“In general, privatization is a bad idea,” AFSCME Council 31 spokesman Anders Lindall told Newstips. “It places a middleman between taxpayers and the government that serves them, a private-sector middleman whose concern isn’t good quality public services but profit.”
And the Sun-Times’s Fran Spielman points out that – unlike parking meters – the water system is something everybody uses. The political danger from something going wrong is that much bigger.
But Daley wants to sell something. “It whets your appetite, the things they see that we don’t see,” Daley said of a meeting with a finance group from Spain that is tempting him with schemes.
And when Daley’s appetite is whetted, danger is ahead.