Illinois Governor Pat Quinn attempted to bury a news item late Friday afternoon that 1,000 guests of the Illinois Department of Corrections would be let free early in a budgetary move.  Consisting mainly of drug and property offenders, “low level, non-violent” prisoners in the last year of their sentence would qualify for early release, and will be fitted with electronic monitoring devices.

Officials with the corrections agency and the Quinn administration declined to provide specifics after announcing the plan late this afternoon. Corrections spokeswoman Januari Smith said the bulk of those to be released and placed on supervised parole will be drug and property crime offenders. The move is estimated to save the agency about $5 million a year, Smith said, though Quinn is giving corrections an extra $2 million to monitor those who are released.

The release of prisoners is another symptom of the state’s dire fiscal situation, and is coupled with Quinn’s plan to layoff approximately 1,000 prison workers. The department will layoff 419 workers effective at month’s end.

Meanwhile, Quinn gave the department an extra $2 million to help divert offenders from state prisons. That money will go toward drug treatment and other community-based alternatives in an effort to reduce the number of people who receive short prison sentences. Prison officials say 47 percent of offenders released from custody each year serve six months or less behind bars.

Clout St: Quinn to release 1,000 inmates from prison in cost-cutting move.

“You can’t even sell a public asset today,” lamented Mayor Daley wistfully.

The Mayor’s complaint came in response to mounting questions over his $1.15 billion lease of the city’s parking meters to a company that has proven incompetent to running those meters.  As so often happens in Daleyspeak, the direction and meaning of the words can go in more than one direction.

What the Mayor meant was to congratulate himself on the timing of the deal, suggesting that the $14.8 million per year from Chicago Parking Meters, LLC was the absolute best the city could get.

To believe that, one has to swallow that Chicagoans only pump $40,000 per day in quarters into the parking meters of the city – a ridiculous presumption that is one complaint in the lawsuit being levied against the city on behalf of the public by the Independent Voters of Illinois – Independent Precinct Organization.  IVI-IPO says the city should have gotten between $2 and $3.5 billion for such a lease – but they also say the deal is an outright illegal use of public funds and distortion of the law that places the power to rescind driving privileges in the hands of a private corporation through the issuance of tickets.

“[The meters were] sold at the highest time. You can’t even sell a public asset today.  You can’t sell anything today” says the Mayor.

Given his lousy negotiation and vetting skills, I’d consider the city lucky to escape the specter of further privatization boondoggles, but what did he have on his mind that the economic downturn has put the kibosh on?

Lake Shore Drive renamed to Doritos Way?

Selling the Chicago River fishing rights to Honeywell (thermostats need mercury after all, and the fish have plenty.)

Perhaps Lincoln Park Zoo to Oscar Mayer, so the world may be introduced to Seal and Pimento loaf?

Individual pothole sponsorships?  Beach lifeguards replaced with a phone connected to a call center in Bangalore?  Cops directing traffic replaced with near-minimum-wage workers?

Wait, we did that one already.

“You can’t even sell a public asset today?”  Blessing counted.

Daley losing confidence in parking meter company :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: City Hall.

Building inspector Richard Kus, brother of Chicago’s former zoning administrator Edward Kus will need to find another $87,720-per-year gig according to a Fran Spielman report in the Sun-Times.  Kus was the subject of an inspector general’s investigation into Kus failing to install a water meter in his home.  Served with a $7,640 bill for water and sewer fees, Kus is one of a recent wave of shakeouts from the building department.

On Monday Buildings Commissioner Richard Monocchio concurred and place Kus on administrative leave pending termination proceedings.

Kus could not be reached for comment.

In recent months, Monocchio has taken a similarly hard line with other wayward employees to erase the stain of Operation Crooked Code — an undercover city-federal investigation that has netted nearly two dozen people, including 15 city employees, on charges that cash bribes and lucrative gifts were paid to ignore building code violations and speed up paperwork.

In July, the commissioner moved to fire a $91,008-a-year plumbing inspector caught doing a side job with no permit, no city license and without signing a secondary employment form.

Monocchio also terminated a $66,556-a-year project manager accused of accepting a fee to provide expert testimony as part of a lawsuit between two outside parties, in violation of the city’s ethics ordinance, which prohibits employees from soliciting and receiving money for their advice.

Acting Inspector General Mary Hodge could not be reached.

City inspector in hot water, on firing line :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State.

Clint Krislov, the attorney bringing the lawsuit against the City of Chicago and State of Illinois on behalf of taxpayers over its 75-year parking meter privatization deal is not the only lawyer acting in the public interest applying heat to the sweetheart arrangement.

The office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is also conducting its own investigation into the “transaction and implementation” of the deal, even as the office represents the state in the Krislov lawsuit, brought on behalf of IVI-IPO.  Clout City reporter Mick Dumke reports:

The suit, filed last month, alleges that the meter deal is illegal because it uses taxpayer money to benefit a private company, delegates police power to the private firm, and restricts the City Council’s ability to set parking policy in the future. Click here to read a PDF of the original complaint.

Most of the suit’s charges were against the city, but it also named the offices of the Illinois comptroller and secretary of state, saying that they didn’t have the right to use public funds to strip anyone of driving privileges as a result of tickets issued at privatized meters. The purpose of Friday’s hearing was to determine if the plaintiffs had grounds to sue the state officials, and Judge Richard Billik answered with a yes and no: the suit could proceed, but he removed the secretary of state as a defendant because it technically wouldn’t be the office to spend any of the money at issue.

Parking meter lawsuit stayin’ alive | The Blog | Chicago Reader.

Illinois businessman and one-time controller of Rod Blagojevich’s campaign fund Christopher Kelly, who recently plead guilty to charges of receiving illegal kickbacks for work done at O’Hare Airport was found dead this morning by his family in his home.

Kelly, 51, was expected by some to flip on his former boss and testify against him in the disgraced former Governor’s upcoming corruption trial, as is also expected of former Blagojevich Chief of Staff John Harris.

Blagojevich, reportedly on the road promoting his new book,  unsuitably tilted The Governor has not been named as a suspect in the death of Kelly. At press time, local security consulting and bodyguard firms are taking no chances by sending salespeople to every John Harris they can find in the state.

Sources: Key Blagojevich adviser Christopher Kelly dead