Brendan Reilly, alderman of the downtown 42nd Ward, voted in favor of the lease and continues to maintain that it was a good one for the city. But he did ask Tom Lanctot, who spearheaded William Blair’s work on the deal, to respond to criticism that the city probably could have gotten more money if it had waited for the country to emerge from the worst recession since the Great Depression.
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(1) Last year Pennsylvania legislators balked at a plan to lease the state’s toll road, and now it appears to be dead. As the Philadelphia Daily News recently reported: “Given the failure of the turnpike-lease plan and the subsequent collapse of financial markets, neither the Rendell administration nor the legislature is very interested in trying again to lease the toll road.”
The Daley administration says that when it was ready to lease Chicago’s meters it sent a request for proposals to more than 150 parking and investment firms around the world. Ten parties expressed interest. The city ruled two unqualified, but only two of the remaining eight followed through with bids.
