ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24\/7. Click here to watch<\/a><\/p>\nDavid Greising, president of the Better Government Association, said the proposal would have compounded the damage of the city’s original parking meter lease.<\/p>\n
“Well, if this had gone through, it would have added incredible insult to the injury. Injury of the original parking meter lease, which is held out as one of the all-time great flops by the city in its history,” he said.<\/p>\n
Johnson, speaking at City Hall, pushed back on criticism of the bid.<\/p>\n
“Well, we didn’t outbid anyone, we didn’t go through on it. Right,” he said. He added, “So we didn’t do what some people were alarmed by. We didn’t do that.”<\/p>\n
Alderpersons also raised concerns about the secrecy surrounding the process, which was conducted under a non-disclosure agreement. Ald. Matt O’Shea of the 19th Ward said the administration submitted its bid “almost a year ago while we’re in a protracted ugly budget negotiation.”<\/p>\n
He called the lack of disclosure troubling, saying, “This is money we don’t have and yet this administration carelessly puts in this secret bid and doesn’t share it with anybody, that’s very disturbing.”<\/p>\n
The details of the bids became public only last week. Johnson said council members now have the information they need.<\/p>\n
“Once the information was allowed to be presented, the city council has everything that they need. They can vote on it in July, they can vote on it in September, they can vote on it in October,” he said.<\/p>\n
Greising said the process should have been more open.<\/p>\n
“When the city is dealing with assets of the scale of the parking meters, at the very least, members of city council ought to be aware of what is going on, because the stakes are so high,” he said.<\/p>\n
The proposed resale of the parking meters still requires City Council approval. With budget season approaching, the administration’s handling of the bid may further strain relations between the mayor and council members.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (WLS) — Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday defended his administration’s approach to a failed bid to repurchase…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":904486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[366081,20174,960,5462,178377,5386,1818,36234,13201,195345,366080,11416,59591,29615],"class_list":["post-904485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-366081","tag-brandon-johnson","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-news","tag-chicago-parking","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-mayor-brandon-johnson","tag-morgan-stanley","tag-parking-chicago","tag-parking-in-chicago","tag-parking-meter","tag-parking-meters","tag-stonepeak"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116842479409586884","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}