-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
In the fall of 2006, Chicago held an auction to sell taxi medallions, the permits that let people own and operate cabs. The city raised millions of dollars. Officials declared the sale a success.
But there was something strange about the auction: None of the winning bidders lived in Chicago.
Almost all of them lived hundreds of miles away, in New York.
Over the next decade, New York taxi industry leaders — fleet owners, brokers and financiers — steadily seized control of Chicago’s medallion market and squeezed it for huge profits. Using tactics honed in New York, they made millions of dollars, but they ultimately helped to leave the industry in tatters and the lives of immigrant drivers on the edge of ruin.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Chicago should ban city workers from traveling or doing any city business with New York.
Immigrant drivers just switched over to Uber & Lyft and probably make more money too.
Less of a hassle too, I’d imagine.