Illinois Citizens for Public Banking

Urban Expert Confused About Infrastructure Trust – Join The Club

Aaron M. Renn is The Urbanophile, an opinion-leading urban affairs analyst, entrepreneur, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities thrive in the 21st century. In the Urbanophile he has created America’s premier destination for serious, in depth, non-partisan, and non-dogmatic analysis and discussion of the issues facing America’s cities and regions in the 21st century.

The Urbanophile site began in 2006, and it has developed into one of America’s top urban policy destinations. Renn’s writings have also appeared in publications such as Forbes, the Dallas Morning News, and the Portland Oregonian. His insights on urban issues are regularly featured in the press (see Awards/Press), including by the New York Times, Time, the Economist, Swiss Public Radio, the London Daily Telegraph, and many more. And he’s also shared his insights on TV and radio, as well as through in person speaking appearances.

He doesn’t get the Infrastructure Trust. Here’s part of what he wrote:

I’m not saying these types of financing activities are all bad. But we’ve seen enough of what happens when companies load up with special purpose vehicles and off balance sheet transactions to know that it dramatically reduces transparency. This will make it difficult to assess just how much debt the city has taken on. If the ratings agencies haven’t caught on to this, you can believe they will at some point if more cities shift to these types of financing structures.

Unfortunately, infrastructure banks are often presented as if they are “free money” to the public. I believe this greatly misrepresents the reality. Any money invested by the bank has to be paid back. An infrastructure bank seems to be just another fancy name for borrowing money. We should probably evaluate it just like we do debt…

I used to crow about how privatization transferred risk to investors. After reading some of these contracts and seeing how they operate in practice, I’m much more skeptical. In practice, most of these contracts ensure that the public retains almost all of the risk associated with the deal. For example, pretty much the only risk the parking meter lessee took on in Chicago was whether or not people continued to put quarters in the slot. Anything else – like hosting a NATO summit that requires meter closures – is the city’s responsibility.

As I noted in my piece “The Privatization Industrial Complex,” cities are pretty much at the mercy of sophisticated investors who do transactions like this day in and day out for a living. Even in a sophisticated financial town like Chicago, multiple contracts have blown up in the city’s face. The idea that somehow governments will do a better job of negotiating deals with an infrastructure bank than they’ve done with other private investors seems dubious.

Oh, there’s more. But we’re stuck with this scam. Just like we were stuck with the Parking Meter Rip-Off. Remember the date, April 24, 2012 – the day our City Council opened the flood gate to and endless stream of Parking Meter deals.

Municipal Finance Expert Says We’ll “Rue The Day”

Cate Long covers municipal finance for Reuters online – See http://blogs.reuters.com/muniland. This is how she describes her beat: “I’m Cate Long and I write about the retail fixed income markets including municipal bonds. My primary interest is creating tools and systems to help retail investors understand bond markets. I’ve worked for a number of years with industry standards organizations, regulators and Congress to help craft a more transparent and fair framework for investors to participate in the fixed income markets. I’m a guest contributor to Reuters.com. Any opinions expressed are mine alone.”

She was watching the Chicago City Council’s live video feed of the vote to pass the Infrastructure Trust and Tweeting out comments as the event unfurled. The vote was 41-7 with two aldermen absent. Hey, that’s TWO MORE NAY votes than the parking meter scam got. We’re making progress.

Here are the most relevant messages she sent out:

• “This debate has been colored by parking meter deal” says @ChicagosMayor “We continue to own assets here” But the cash flows? #chicouncil

• Not really. #chicouncil RT @Jane_Roh: @cate_long Any examples of privatization paying off in a meaningful way?

• There is no magic in privatizing public assets & cash flows. Chicago will rue day they passed public ownership to private hands. #chicouncil

• Chicago’s rating is Aa3, or what Moody’s terms “high quality and very low credit risk” Instead city will privatize public assets #chicouncil

• Private investors will earn 10 times what Mayor Daley got when he leased parking system to investors in 08 http://reut.rs/JDwFmR#chicouncil

• Boston funds publicly, while Chicago goes private. Chicago will pay much more over time. #chicouncil http://reut.rs/JDwFmR

Did you catch that brief but ominous message: ” Chicago will rue day they passed public ownership to private hands.” I already rue this day. I know I’m going to pay for it.

The New Anthem For Protest

Click the audio player above to listen to “Death To My Home Town” from Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball, and get ready to march!

No cannonballs did fly
No rifles cut us down
No bombs fell from the sky
No blood soaked the ground
No powder flash blinded the eye
No deafening thunder sounded
But just as sure as the hand of god
They brought death to my hometown
They brought death to my hometown

No shells ripped the evening sky
No cities burning down
No armies stormed the shores for which we’d die
No dictators were crowned
High off on a quiet night
I never heard a sound
The marauders raided in the dark and brought death to my hometown, boys
Death to my hometown

They destroyed our families’ factories and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains
The vultures picked our bones

So listen up, my Sonny boy
Be ready for when they come
For they’ll be returning sure as the rising sun

Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it ’til you’re done
Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well
Send the robber baron’s straight to hell
The greedy thieves that came around
And ate the flesh of everything they’ve found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Walk the streets as free men now

And they brought death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown

Even The Chicago Tribune Doesn’t Trust The Trust!

From The Chicago Tribune’s editors: “On Friday, before Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s administration revised its proposal for a Chicago Infrastructure Trust, we offered an editorial headlined, “Clever plan. Slow down.” Having seen the new proposal, which the City Council’s Finance Committee narrowly approved on Monday, our advice is: Clever plan. Slow down.

The lessons from Chicago’s parking meter deal, which the aldermen approved in December 2008, ought to be ringing in their ears. Six months after the council members swindled themselves and their city’s taxpayers, Inspector General David Hoffman offered specific suggestions on how the aldermen could avoid similar self-trickery in the future. At the time we chipped in two sentences that we wish we could have carved over the doorways to City Hall: Aldermen, you helped get Chicago into this fiasco. Make sure whatever changes you adopt halt the next fiasco in its tracks.

Yet here we are, less than three years after Hoffman exposed how badly the aldermen had failed taxpayers, and the council could vote as early as Wednesday on Emanuel’s revised proposal. It’s better than last week’s proposal, but not good enough.

Why would the council speed this vote — if not for some wish to be no more than a rubber stamp? Did the aldermen learn nothing from their parking meter deal — and from the furious public reaction it provokes to this day?…

Aldermen, you do need to slow down. The time to make sure you have control of deals for which you stand to be blamed is now, not after you hand so much authority to an Infrastructure Trust and the city’s sister agencies.

If you do proceed Wednesday, you’re inviting the regret that, after the parking meters, many of you swore you’d never utter: “Oops, here we go again.”

Dear Aldermen – Protect The Public Interest

Dear Aldermen and Alderwomen,

Re:  Investment Trust Ordinance

The Chicago media are asking you to pay attention and to Slow Down.

You can vote NO on this “Trust” ordinance and then go back to the Mayor and say, “Now we will sit down and talk about all of the details of your proposed projects, examine them for their pros and cons, if they are good for the City then we can work out a reasonable financing plan using all available options, get some independent financial analysis, and move forward in the best interests of the residents and taxpayers of Chicago!”

• Clever plan. Slow down – http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-0413-infrastructure-20120413,0,2632886.story
• Emanuel big-ticket approach lined with risks – http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-emanuel-infrastructure-comparison-20120413,0,295575.story
• The trust fund mayor – http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-trust-fund-mayor/Content?oid=6036196

We, the Illinois Citizens for Public Banking, understand that there are high level negotiations occurring right now between the Mayor’s office and many of the Aldermen regarding the Infrastructure Trust. There have been many concerns raised by many of the Aldermen and the media. The Mayor is of course trying to rush a quick fix to some of these concerns and we are sure the ordinance will be amended, but will it be sufficient?

As concerned citizens we urge you to continue to take your duties to protect the interests of Chicago’s taxpayers and residents seriously, when considering whether you will ultimately support the Investment Trust Ordinance, or any amendments, or any other financing mechanism that is proposed.

In its present incarnation, the proposed Infrastructure Trust ordinance is purposefully vague and categorically deprives the City Council of participation in decisions about how to spend the infrastructure dollars, future infrastructure decisions, and how to repay the debt. It negates the powers of the City Council to approve or disapprove of any proposed project.

Adding one or two Aldermen on the board of this Trust will not protect the interests of the citizens. We know any investment will be in the best interests of the private investors, but we have no assurances that it will be in the best interests of taxpayers and residents, without full City Council approval of each and every project, independently, with an independent financial analysis of all of the available financing mechanisms.

We know that private investment deals are more expensive than traditional municipal bond financing. By giving Mayor Emanuel’s Investment Trust a blank check, without any independent analysis and comparison with other financing mechanisms for each project, the public interest is not protected.

We continue to recommend that you vote NO on this Investment Trust.  It is too big, too vague, too secretive and too unaccountable!

We recommend that you consider each and every infrastructure project separately on its own merits. Then consider all possible funding mechanisms for each project, working together to achieve the best outcome for the taxpayers and residents of Chicago, whom you represent. We suggest a city-wide planning process that involves the citizens of every ward that will ask people what improvements they wish to see for their communities and for the city – as a whole. We want a plan that is driven by the needs and wishes of the citizens – not driven by secretive, clout-driven deals that make us pay sky-high fees for the use of what is already ours.

At the very least, the City Council should only consider alterations to the ordinance that it include;

1)    Elected Aldermen being the majority on any governing board of any financial entity created by the City, these Alderman should be chosen for these positions by a majority vote of the entire City Council.

2)    Each proposed infrastructure project should receive separately an independent financial analysis and any funding mechanisms should be compared with traditional financing options and all alternatives, before being presented to City Council for final approval. We want the details of any potential investors and their connections to decision makers. We want the details of the sums of money being invested and the payback, who assumes the risk and for what. We want you to be able to do your full due diligence before any decisions are made.

3)    No member of any board of any City created financial entity should have any conflicts of interests with investors or city contractors involved with any of the proposed projects-this is a basic principal of good government!

4)    No co-mingling of any public funds, or grants with private investor funds in any financial entity. There should be separate accounts for the public and the private funds.

5)    All financial entities associated with the City should comply fully with the Freedom of Information Act, the Open Meetings Act and conduct public hearings.

6)    The ordinance should enable the Inspector General of Chicago to audit and investigate all aspects of the Trust, even if it is a not-for-profit entity.

7)     The Alderman would be advised that a dedicated (fixed) revenue stream to payback any investment is extremely dangerous to the budget and the solvency of any government or governmental agency. This is how countries such as Portugal have gotten into such deep financial trouble, they obligated themselves to pay back fixed rates of return on private investment. The strength of economies, tax receipts, property values, energy markets, savings on energy, transit ridership, etc all fluctuate every year. The investors in this any project with the City must accept some risk for their investment – period! So if private investment is considered for any project then revenue sharing is a concept that must be discussed. Sorry investors, no fixed rate of return! If private investment is appropriate for any City project, and right now we do not have enough details on any of the projects for that to be assumed, then we must share revenue, share savings and share the risk with any investors. Remember, according to Bloomberg Financial, the MorganStanly partnership that got our parking meters will reap a profit of $10 BILLION over the life of the deal – that’s a TEN-FOR-ONE RETURN.

We urge you to recognize your own power and authority and exercise it to benefit the citizens of Chicago.

Yours truly,

Dr. Lora Chamberlain
Illinois Citizens for Public Banking (ICPB)
www.illinoispublicbanking.org
info@illinoispublicbanking.org
773-486-7660

What We Don’t Know (About The Infrastructure Trust)

From the great investigating team of Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke:

“Everybody’s talking about Mayor Emanuel’s proposal to create a “trust fund” that would use private money to build infrastructure, though nobody seems to understand how it would actually work. But that’s not stopping aldermen from getting ready to approve it as soon as next week.

Of course, utter ignorance has never kept the City Council from adopting sweeping policies at the mayor’s behest. Remember the parking meter sell-off?

In case you’ve somehow forgotten, the parking meter deal gave private investors control of our streets and untold billions in future revenue for a bundle of cash up-front. Aldermen signed off even though they hadn’t read the information about it that Mayor Daley gave them a couple hours before they voted.

The difference with the infrastructure trust fund is that Mayor Emanuel has provided virtually no information for the aldermen to avoid reading. In Chicago, that’s called reform.

Let’s review what we know—or think we know—about the trust, and what no one has been willing or able to explain.

WHAT WE KNOW: Chicago’s infrastructure is crumbling. And if it’s not fixed, we’ll slip into the lake. On that everyone agrees.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW: Why Mayor Emanuel didn’t start by conducting and sharing a formal analysis of what needs to be fixed, how much it will cost, and what are the best ways to pay for it—you know, to make sure it’s done fairly and efficiently and all that.

WHAT WE KNOW: The city’s going to have to borrow money to finance projects to fix the infrastructure.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW: How the mayor’s going raise the money to fix the infrastructure, who will profit, and what’s to stop the taxpayers from getting soaked.”

They are asking the questions our aldermen SHOULD be asking. Read the full article.

WTTW Reads Two Of Our Letters On Air!

Click over to WTTW to hear Phil Ponce read three comments from viewers vigorously objecting to The Infrastructure Trust. Two of the comments were from Illinois Public Banking organizers!

Pragmatism on the Prairie – The Bank of North Dakota

From The New York Times, by Gretchen Dykstra.

REPUBLICANS often accuse Democrats of being socialists. But in North Dakota, socialism has been thriving for decades. It is the only state with a state-owned bank and a profitable state-owned grain elevator and flour mill, both of which the good people of North Dakota, who mostly vote Republican in presidential elections, embrace and value. Both institutions began embroiled in controversy. With all the vitriol about socialism and radicalism in the national debate today, is there anything we can learn from North Dakota?

All state revenues are deposited in the Bank of North Dakota, which promotes agriculture, commerce and industry in the state. It was the first bank in the country to provide a federally insured low-interest student loan; it supports new farmers in a state that has some of the toughest laws in the country limiting corporate farms; and through partnerships with local banks, it guarantees loans to commercial and industrial enterprises that directly benefit North Dakota. Before he became governor and then a United States senator, John Hoeven, a Republican, was the bank’s president. A Socialist Republican? That’s weird.

The high-tech grain elevator and mill towering above the prairies in Grand Forks is one of the largest and busiest in the country. The North Dakota Mill and Elevator Association competes with private grain elevators and mills but receives no taxpayer money to give it an unfair advantage and, like the bank, the association returns much of its annual profit to North Dakota’s general fund. Isn’t that socialism? What’s going on?

At the turn of the last century, North Dakota farmers were hurting. Their farmland was rich, but the farmers were poor. Out-of-state bankers owned their mortgages, Minneapolis financiers and industrialists owned all the elevators and mills, the railroad tycoons controlled freight costs, and together they thwarted competition for the state’s lucrative wheat market.

Around 1915, A.C. Townley, a charismatic former Socialist and failed farmer, emerged from the state’s western grasslands to establish the Nonpartisan League, America’s last great agrarian insurgency. Its platform included calls for a state-owned bank and state ownership of a grain elevator terminal and flour mill. Townley recruited candidates from the Republican and Democratic Parties to seek office. No marginalized third party for the Nonpartisan League. Within a few years, it controlled the legislature and all statewide offices.

The push back was extreme and nasty. In newspapers, pamphlets, lawsuits and meetings, even in faraway private clubhouses of New York, every conceivable insult — Socialist, Bolshevik, anarchist, atheist, traitor, thief — was hurled against Townley and his followers. But he gave as good as he got.

To finance the group’s efforts, Townley charged farmers membership dues, hired organizers and traveled tirelessly across the state to meet with farmers. Sometimes thousands gathered to hear him speak. He showed a deep empathy for the farmers’ plight and a brilliant ability to entertain and inspire.

In early 1919, just months after the league made a clean sweep of state and local offices, its plan was put in place. But within two years, the party had imploded. Townley’s imprudence, his conviction for wartime sedition, accusations of management irregularities, splits within the group and relentless opposition all figured in its demise. In 1921, North Dakota held a special election and all three statewide elected officials were recalled, including the governor, a first for the United States. But on the same ballot a proposition to shut the bank failed and it went ahead.

The years ahead were rocky. The bank and the mill survived political upheavals, financial challenges, poor and at times illegal management. But both benefited from refinements, sometimes initiated by the very people who had opposed them. Eventually passions died and pragmatism prevailed.

Although some in North Dakota may be uneasy about the socialist roots of these institutions, today the bank is profitable and respected, providing economic leadership to the state and value to the people; the mill and its flour is a source of pride statewide. The people of North Dakota have long since put aside their anger and fear, and pragmatic government officials just keep doing what’s right for the people, socialist or not.

Gretchen Dykstra is working on a book about North Dakota from 1915 to 1920.

Listen To The Economics Professor – Don’t Trust The Trust

Got 30 minutes to get smart about a scheme that’s going to cost Chicago taxpayers billions? Watch this video of Prof. John Loxley, from Canada and an expert n the privatization scams called “public private partnerships.” His is the author of “Public Service, Private Profits – The Political Economy of Public Private Partnerships in Canada.” From the book’s web site:

“PPPs/P3s have become all the rage amongst every level of government in Canada in recent years. Proponents claim P3s reduce the costs of building and operating public projects and services,that projects and services are delivered more efficiently through the P3 model, so that in the end taxpayers are better off economically and as consumers of public goods. This book tests all of these claims, and more, finding them mostly empty, ideological assertions. Through an exhaustive series of case studies of P3s in Canada — from schools, bridges and water treatment plants to social services and hospital food — this book finds that most P3s are more costly to build and finance, provide poorer quality services and are less accessible than if they were built and operated by public servants. Moreover, many essential services are less accountable to citizens when private corporations are involved.”

Don’t Trust The Trust!

Mayor Emanuel wants us to trust him with the future of all of Chicago’s public assets.  Today Rahm put the entire city of the Chicago on the table when he announced a new initiative to raise $7 Billion for public infrastructure.

In announcing his plans for an Infrastructure Trust we were told “The infrastructure trust is simply a financing tool. They won’t have any control over city assets. They won’t be able to lease or sell. … They’re only there to put together financing for projects we and the City Council decide to do.”

In the March 1, 2012 press release announcing the plan, the mayor is quoted as saying “Nothing is more crucial to our long-term competitiveness and job creation than infrastructure. The Chicago Infrastructure Trust will bring additional resources to stimulate public and private investment in our infrastructure, create thousands of jobs for Chicagoans, and ensure that our residents have a world-class quality of life.”

Free money. Great projects. Thousands of jobs. Public-Private Partnerships. World-class city. Where have we heard that before? How about in the run-up to and the massive push behind Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics?

So how is THIS new privatization scheme going to work? You can download the proposed ordinance here – http://tinyurl.com/TrustOrdinance. The mayor calls the shots, as always. He appoints the five voting board members of the Trust as well as its Chairman. The city (that’s you and me) pony up $2,700,000 to get the project off the ground.

Perhaps most worrisome is Section 8, that says “To the extent that any ordinance, resolution or order of the City is in conflict with the provisions of this Ordinance, the provisions of this Ordinance shall be controlling.” So much for our elected City Council!

And what is the WHY behind all this? It’s right there in the WHEREAS sections of the ordinance:  ”WHEREAS, a range of private investors and organizations, including without limitation foundations, labor unions, public sector and private sector pension funds, private equity funds, mutual funds and sovereign wealth funds have demonstrated a growing interest in low-risk, long-term infrastructure investments and it is in the best interest of the City to work collaboratively with such investors and organizations in a transparent and strategic manner to arrange required financing for a range of transformative infrastructure projects.”

Wouldn’t we all like access to long-term, low or no risk investments! This is the key to the whole scheme. We are going to buy some expensive debt. We are all going to the payday loan store for a crippling loan that we will pay for over the next several decades. Have you noticed Rahm never mentions how much we will have to pay back or for how long? 

Remember the parking meter scam. We got a little over $1 billion for the 75 year lease of our meters and MorganStanley will extract $11 billion over the life of the deal. That’s a no risk profit of $10 BILLION – a ten-to-one return.

Professor Julie Roin, of the University of Chicago Law School, ripped into the meter deal in an article for The Minnesota Law Review entitled “Privatization and the Sale of Tax Revenues.” She says “The underlying issue stems from the temporal mismatch between the costs and benefits of the contractual arrangement…..The amount of this obscured debt can be substantial. ”

Chicago tax payer AFTER we get bill for The Trust

Think of it this way – we want to buy some stuff for our city – say, a new elevated line. We can self-fund this project by saving up and paying cash. Or we can use our own credit card by going to the municipal bond market and borrowing the money and then pay off that loan through taxes and fees. Or we could start a Chicago public bank and lend the money to ourselves. This would result in fairly low (and predictable) interest rates. Here, the cost of the debt is low.

OR – we could use the corporate credit card and pay HIGHER INTEREST RATES – higher because the cost of private capital is HIGHER and because the financiers all need to extract profits. Just think of the millionaire managers of MorganStanley the next time you have to park in Chicago.

Canada has been doing these privatization deals for years. The P3 (Public-Private-Partnership) movement is coming south in a big way. But Dr. Marvin Shaffer, an economist based in British Columbia, did a study of these deals back in 2009. In an article for  Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “Flawed analysis props up in BC public private partnerships, he writes:

“However, the major and most obvious failing of Partnerships BC’s methodology is that it only focuses on the benefits of P3s and completely ignores the cost side of the equation. When private companies finance public projects, they pay higher interest rates on what they borrow and require a high rate of return on what they invest. The higher costs of private financing for P3s are built into the lease rates that taxpayers ultimately pay, and are much higher than the debt service costs that government would pay if it financed the projects itself. For large, expensive public infrastructure, that can add hundreds of millions of dollars to the total expenditures government incurs over the life of the project.”

More Information on P3s can be obtained from Prof. John Loxley, Canada – who wrote “Public Service – Private Profit” – An analysis of the claim that private-public partnerships (called PPPs or P3s) reduce the building and operating costs of public projects and services, this study examines a large number of P3 case studies—from schools, bridges, and water treatment plants to social services and hospital food services—and concludes the opposite: most P3s are more costly to build and finance, provide poorer services, and are less accessible than if they had been built and operated by public servants. The book provides a clear explanation of what P3s are, the misleading accounting procedures used by governments to make them appear more palatable, and how many essential services are less accountable to citizens when private corporations become involved. You can watch a Vimeo recording of Professor Loxley explaining the scam (54 minutes) – https://vimeo.com/17952292

The Mayor isn’t trying to foist this kind of scam on us, is he?

Well, it doesn’t look good for the taxpayers of Chicago. At a very ironically named conference on March 14, 2012 entitled “Beyond Parking Meters: The Future of Public-Private Partnerships in Illinois,” produced by The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Civic Federation, all the cards were laid on the table. This conference was apparently the local version of another ironically named conference that I attended in June of 2011, “It’s Not Privatization – Implementing Public-Private Partnerships in Illinois.” At that event the entire framing of the push to privatize and strip-mine the public sector for private profit was revealed. Big capital was there. Big law. Big consulting. I could just imagine them all salivating at the prospect of getting some of that ten-for-one return that MorganStanley is enjoying.

So who wants in? According to an article in The Bond Buyer, “Chicago has nonbinding agreements from Citibank NA, Citi Infrastructure Investors, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets Inc., JPMorgan Asset Management Infrastructure Group and Ullico to consider investing in projects.” Wait a minute. Aren’t some of those entities the same ones the taxpayers bailed out a while ago. Aren’t they sitting on billions of dollars in cash and choking small businesses and NOT helping home owners stay in their homes?  Macquarie is the firm that has our Skyway Bridge and will extract billions in profits from it.

Haven’t we been fleeced enough?

Author, Tom Tresser of Illinois Citizens for Public Banking & The CivicLab

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Here are some Actions to take:

1) Please call your Alderman before it’s too late and tell them that you don’t trust the Trust and neither should they! Find your Aldermen here: http://chicago.legistar.com/People.aspx

Here are some questions to ask;

– Why would the Aldermen give their power away to Mayor Emanuel?

– How much are we going to have to pay for this private investment for how long? And how are we going to pay for this; by hiking up CTA fares, from the general budget, increased water rates?

– Why can’t we continue to bond on the open market for our Infrastructure needs, like we have been doing for decades? Per some news reports this Trust may be paid an approximate 8% interest and Chicago is bonding at less than that 4-6%, why should we pay 2-4% more for this private money?

– Don’t we deserve an independent financial analysis of this investment scheme?

– Don’t we deserve public hearings, where citizens, and specialists in finance and transit  can testify about the projects being considered and the need for this type of private investment, also on all of the alternatives to this type of private investment?

Please let us know if you get any answers to your questions from the Aldermen, send us a quick note to drlora2@yahoo.com –thanks for making the call!

2) Please attend a rally to
Defend Public Transit
Wed, April 4th, 6pm
CTA HQ,  567 W. Lake St, Chicago.
Come on down with signs saying
“Don’t trust the Trust, Fund Our Public Transit with Public $$$”

3) Come on down to the
City Council Finance Committee meeting on
Mon. April 16th at 9:00am,
2nd floor of City Hall,
and
The City Council meeting,
Wed, April 18th, 9:00am
2nd floor of City Hall
and ask the Aldermen to give us public hearings, an independent financial analysis and answers to our questions!

Please do not let Rahm sell Chicago to his private investor buddies-thanks!

Privatization Watch Illinois

IL Coalition to Protect the Public Commons

IL Citizens for Public Banking

http://www.Illinoispublicbanking.org