By April, cash-strapped Chicago had already burned through the $82 million that Mayor Brandon Johnson set aside for the entire year to cover settlements and judgments, most of them tied to allegations of police abuse.
On Wednesday, the City Council dug its budget hole even deeper by authorizing seven additional settlements that will cost beleaguered Chicago taxpayers $87.9 million more.
Johnson blamed his predecessors for refusing to confront the Chicago Police Department’s checkered past. Instead, prior mayors looked the other way and left those “legacy” cases on his doorstep, he said.
“We had brutality that existed. It was ignored when people came forward. … It was covered up,” Johnson told reporters this week, pointing to the 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald that preceded former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to not to seek reelection. “There are multiple cases in which police brutality occurred in the ’80s, in the ’90s, that we are dealing with today. … We’re not gonna kick the can down the road anymore.”
The most controversial, but not the largest of the seven settlements, goes to private investors from as far away as Abu Dhabi who spent $1.16 billion to lease Chicago parking meters in exchange for the right to pocket parking revenue for 75 years.
Chicago Parking Meters LLC has already raked in nearly $2 billion— and a record $160.9 million last year alone — with 58 years to go on the deal.
Now, the notoriously lopsided deal will get $15.5 million worse, thanks to former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to suspend parking enforcement during the pandemic and use the stay-at-home shutdown to the city’s advantage by temporarily reclaiming some of the meters.
Ald. Scott Waguespack, former Finance Committee chair, has called the settlement the city’s “first win in a series of losses” on the parking meter deal because CPM initially demanded $322 million to resolve three legal claims, but the 32nd Ward alderperson added this week, “It still doesn’t feel like a win.”
As part of the settlement, the city agreed to hire 10 more parking enforcement aides for one year at a cost of roughly $520,000.
Deputy Corporation Counsel Jim McDonald assured the Finance Committee this week that the city alone will decide where to deploy those 10 extra ticket-writers, though CPM will be consulted.
The largest of the other settlements — two of them for $20 million and a third for $8 million — go to three men who spent more than 35 years in prison after being wrongfully accused of setting a 1986 Little Village fire that killed two people.
The second-largest settlement goes to a man who spent 16 years in prison for a Pilsen murder he did not commit.
A $5 million settlement that triggered a heated Council debate and a 36-13 vote will go to a woman suffering from a mental health crisis who lost both legs to frostbite while walking barefoot in her bathrobe in single-degree temperatures after being locked out of her home.
And a $1.2 million settlement is yet another payout tied to Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts, one of the most notorious officers in the Chicago Police Department’s checkered history of disgraced cops. Watts was sentenced to 22 months in federal prison for shaking down an FBI informant.
He was accused of framing hundreds of people on drug charges from 2003 to 2008 while he ran a tactical unit in the now-demolished Ida B. Wells public housing complex on the South Side. Then-Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx tossed out more than 200 drug convictions involving Watts.
In other action at Wednesday’s Council meeting:
- Newly appointed Aviation Commissioner Michael McMurray was unanimously confirmed, as the mayor introduced a $4.3 billion bond issue to refinance existing debt and help bankroll the massive O’Hare Airport modernization project. A $265 million loan was proposed for Midway Airport.
McMurray has told the Sun-Times he hopes to smooth strained relations between United and American airlines; begin construction this summer on a 19-gate satellite concourse at O’Hare; and award more than 100 concession contracts.
- Alderpersons removed Chicago’s “paper ceiling” by allowing candidates for city jobs to substitute work experience, apprenticeships, job certifications and military training for a college diploma.
- Wrigleyville Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th) tried again to rein in vacation rentals, this time with a “transparency” ordinance that will require Airbnb and Vrbo to give far more information to area residents who have to live with the sometimes rowdy consequences of vacation rentals.