Double the Revenue? (UPDATE)

Shouldn't this be bigger news? And why are we reading it in the New York Times?

• When Mayor Richard M. Daley traveled to Abu Dhabi in February, his office announced that the trip was intended to sell Chicago as a place to do business. Left unsaid was that that Persian Gulf emirate was about to become one of the biggest investors in a deal to lease Chicago’s parking meters for 75 years.

  The city signed the now-controversial, $1.15 billion lease with a new company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC in February, and city officials said two funds of the Morgan Stanley investment fund made up 99 percent of the new company, with “several other entities” sharing the remaining 1 percent.

And how is that investment performing?

• And in the case of the parking contract, the parking meter company projects a net income of about $58 million in 2010 , after this year more than doubling what the meters had brought in for the city.

More than doubling what the city brought in? We smell a scandal here. A scandal of enormous proportions, especially in light of this past week's budget passage:

• A year has passed since aldermen hurriedly approved the privatization deal, but the issue remains a hot topic at City Hall. The mayor won City Council backing last week to balance his 2010 budget with almost $600 million from the upfront parking company payment, meaning almost all of the windfall will be spent within the first two years of the deal.

We didn't major in economics in school, but even we can see that something stinks to high heaven about this deal. Anyone in a position to make a difference smell the same BS we are?

UPDATE: We realize the parking consortium raised rates and that could contribute to the doubling of revenue. That begs the question, why didn't Daley raise the rates and keep the money for the city? Yeah, yeah, "political fallout" you answer. Going from twenty-five cents to fifty cents wouldn't have caused that much outcry seeing as how parking was at a premium anyway.

The contract was a crooked deal from day one, and Daley's spending the entire payout in two years is going to drive the city into receivership in short order.