Pat Dowell

...

Patrick Fitzgerald

...

I had the good fortune to work for a lot of really terrific people, but, but yeah, Pat, Pat is at the top of the list.

Uh, and, and, you know, that could be the jumping off process, or the, the jumping off point for really good work.

And we got, we, we had leads from lots of places, but, um, you know, the, the, o- one of the things that, that really, I think, over an extended period was responsible for a lot of the progress that the city made in, in dealing with corruption and organized crime was the, the strength of the investigative journalists in the community.

What did you learn most from Patrick Fitzgerald?

Oh, that's a hard one.

We followed it from the beginning.

I am appreciative and sympathetic to Scott Waguespack, Pat Dowell, uh, Nicole Lee, and a couple of other alders who led the negotiations and, and wrangled a few concessions for the city, namely some small amount of profit sharing.

Um, as everyone probably knows, they've heard us and others talk about this for 18 years now.

The original sell-off of the parking meter rights also included the sell-off of all the revenues from the system for 75 years.

Yeah.

And I don't think any of them were saying this is a great deal.

I didn't hear anyone, I didn't hear Scott Waguespack, Pat Dowell, they were not saying, "This is an awesome deal." They were saying, "Listen, we got stuck with this, and, um, we've done our best to try to mitigate it a little bit."

Yeah.

...

the lead negotiator, uh, Pat Dowell, the finance chair.

Um, but they all kinda had a sense of let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Okay.

[laughs]

Um, this one, this one is really about, um, uh, philosophical differences in how to run the city, and one of the interesting, uh, defections that's happened, uh, recently is that Pat Dowell, uh, the, uh, who was the, the mayor's ch- pick as head of the finance committee, really has gone over to the side of the so-called corporate caucus on some of these key issues.

And so it's really about the philosophy of how to run the city and not so much a, a racial power struggle.

Any thoughts on how this all impacts his chances of re-election in February?

[laughs]

Alderwoman Pat Dowell led a small team that hammered out this deal, but they did so without Mayor Johnson's involvement, although the city's corporation council was kept up to speed.

Where was he? [laughs]

[laughs]

He argues council members fought hard over deportation flights, but failed to demand that Stone Peak include Black-owned firms in its legal, financial, or lobbying teams for the multi-billion dollar deal.

Meanwhile, supporters of the deal, including Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell, are dismissing the last-minute push as 11th-hour shenanigans.

They warn that further delays risk landsliding into a lawsuit as the deadline to approve the transfer looms on September 30th.

City Council decides Tuesday whether to lock in the deal or push for one more round of bargaining.

They're going to say they did their job.

I thought it was interesting the way Pat Dowell, who's the finance chair, when she was talking about the sale, she talked about how it was a historic day.

It's not.

But, you know, she treated the sale of the the.

They estimate over the life of the remaining contract, 55 years of the contract remaining, those payments are going to be about $6.8 million a year.

They're going to total around $376 million.

And Pat Dowell swears on a stack of...

Harold's Fried Chicken, that that is going to be airmarked for pensions.

Alders showed up for a special meeting to debate and vote on whether to approve the sale of the parking meter contract.

But Alderwoman Pat Dowell requested the issue be delayed.

I delayed it to, uh, make sure that I wanted to shore up the votes in favor of the ordinance, and also to give my colleagues more time to review the ordinance.

Under Mayor Richard Daley, the city's parking meters were leased in a 75-year deal that was later determined to be undervalued, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.