Despite such problems, Daley's wheeling and dealing has intrigued politicians from California to Pennsylvania. By "privatizing" government infrastructure, elected officials have found a way to generate hundreds of millions of dollars without raising taxes.
Supporters of the idea describe it as simple good management. "The question for Los Angeles is, should the city be in the parking garage business?" said Dana Levenson, Chicago's former chief financial officer who oversaw the city's parking garage and toll road leases. "A city should be in the school business, the police business, the fire business and the sanitation business. Not parking garages and toll roads."
Levenson, now head of North American infrastructure banking for the Royal Bank of Scotland, said that by shedding parking meters and garages, Chicago officials were able to improve city's finances, pay off debt and spend tens of millions of dollars on social programs and parks. The city also socked away hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves, which generate interest to help replace the revenue from meters and garages.
If L.A. chooses to privatize garages and meters, the biggest challenge for the mayor and council will be to resist the temptation to spend it all to adjust the current year's budget, pay salaries or fund special projects, said Steve Steckler, chairman of Infrastructure Management Group Inc. in Bethesda, Md. A good chunk should be squirreled away in an interest-bearing reserve account, he said.
"We like to tell cities to take a little up front and take a little more over time," Steckler said. "They're not very good at that. We're typically asked, 'What's the point, my term ends in three years?' "
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phil.willon@latimes.com
