At least 22 City Council members say they plan to reject the sale of Chicago parking meters to a New York investment firm, after accusing Mayor Brandon Johnson of withholding critical information from the Council and secretly agreeing to a June 30 deadline to authorize the transaction.
In a sharply worded letter to the mayor delivered Monday, the coalition of alderpersons said their decision to block the transfer of city parking meters from Chicago Parking Meters LLC to Stonepeak Partners is not based on the merits of the deal, but “on the fact that your administration has systematically withheld the information necessary for proper evaluation.”
“Your administration agreed to a binding timeline on behalf of the City of Chicago without informing the body that must vote on the underlying transaction. This is not a procedural technicality. It is a fundamental failure of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of city government,” the letter states.
In a statement released Monday, the Johnson administration maintained that the June 30 date is “not a deadline for Council action,” only the date by which the city must “report on Council’s progress.” The date does not change the City Council’s “independent authority over its review, determination or timeline for consideration” of the proposed meter transfer.
Johnson’s office stated that the mayor introduced the ordinance authorizing the sale to Stonepeak “at the earliest practicable opportunity” after completing “procedural steps necessary to fulfill its obligations” in the concession agreement. “City Council remains an independent legislative body with sole authority to approve or reject the proposed transfer,” the statement said.
The letter was signed by many of the same Council members responsible for rejecting Johnson’s proposed corporate head tax before approving an alternative 2026 budget that includes replacement revenues opposed by the mayor. Stonepeak declined to comment on the Council members’ letter.
Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) cast one of only five “no” votes against the lopsided parking meter deal that Chicagoans love to hate.
Waguespack said his decision to take a stand against the transfer to Stonepeak Partners has nothing to do with political grandstanding or holding out false hopes to change the “ironclad” deal that has already allowed private investors from as far away as Abu Dhabi to nearly double their $1.15 billion outlay with 57 years to go on the original deal.
It’s about Johnson’s decision to agree to a June 30 deadline to approve the transfer to Stonepeak Partners without informing the legislative body that needs to take that pivotal vote.
“It was the administration that was making all the decisions. They ran out the clock on what should have been an information period for us of 60 days. And now they’re saying they have this deadline of June 30 and we have to sign off on it?” Waguespack told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“That’s so wholly unethical and lacks any concern for public accountability,” he said. “It’s up to the mayor to find those votes. Yes, it could lead to arbitration or a lawsuit. But the mayor has put us in the position for that because of the lack of being open about this.”
Ald. Nicole Lee (11th) added, “We’re not a rubber stamp here. It’s incumbent on all of us to understand what this deal is. … There’s not time for that. If there was actual collaboration going on, we would not be in this situation.”
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) said he and his colleagues will not be “forced into a corner to vote for something” by June 30 when the mayor’s office has had the information for months and chose to withhold it from the City Council.
“How can we make an educated decision when we’re not getting any of the information they were privvy to? To have your law department, your budget department and everybody in the mayor’s office say, ‘Here’s the deal, but we can’t tell you anything about what’s in the deal’ is total BS,” Beale said Monday.
Earlier this year, Johnson announced that City Hall had dropped out of the competition to take back Chicago parking meters after determining that the $3 billion asking price “would have made a bad deal even worse.”
The window opened last summer when Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital Partners and the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi signaled their desire to unload Chicago parking meters and started inviting potential bids.
But after submitting an undisclosed bid, the mayor quickly learned that the asking price would have been nearly triple the $1.15 billion that Chicago received from the 75-year lease in 2008. Johnson decided that the risk wasn’t worth the reward, either financially or politically.
The letter to the mayor refers to that history and accuses Johnson of keeping the City Council in the dark every step of the way.
It claims that Johnson submitted a bid without informing — let alone seeking input from — the City Council, signed a nondisclosure agreement with Morgan Stanley without telling the Council until May 18, and waited until two weeks ago to inform Council members of the revised June 30 deadline to accept or reject the transfer to Stonepeak.
Even then, selected alderpersons were told the Finance and Law departments were “legally prohibited from sharing their analyses.”
“The Council has not received any accounting of criminal, civil or regulatory actions against Stonepeak or its affiliates, officers or directors, nor answers to basic questions about the ownership structure, the terms of the transfer, anticipated governance changes or whether the city faces any tax liability as a result of this transaction,” the letter states.
“They are the minimum threshold of information any legislative body would require before voting to approve a transfer of a public asset of this scale.”