Remember that referendum on the ballot just last week about the City buying electricity competitively in order to save citizens money?
- Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing a new plan to skim off some of the savings Chicago electricity customers stand to gain from lower rates expected as part of a bulk power purchasing contract, with the money going for unspecified energy efficiency projects.
The mayor also wants greater control over how much of the deal a company can get.
Some aldermen are skeptical, questioning Emanuel's power grab on the specifics of electrical aggregation, which allows the city to negotiate lower rates on residents' behalf. Last week, 56 percent of Chicago voters agreed with the idea in a referendum question.
Now the rush is on to lock in savings as soon as possible. Emanuel wants to award the power savings deal within a month.
A month? This sounds suspiciously like the parking meter deal that Shortshanks rushed through to the detriment of taxpayers a few years back. And Rahm wants to keep the savings we were supposed to see? And under his proposal, he would have the authority to set the percentages of power that each company would be responsible for generating - or just assign all of the power generating needs to one single company, replacing the ComEd monopoly with one of his choosing.
Someone ought to ask if all that money is going to the unfunded pension obligations. We can already see what the answer would be.