Legal wrangling over Chicago's controversial parking meter deal continues to move forward. A local judge yesterday ruled that a lawsuit aimed at Mayor Daley's privatization ploy could move forward, and that the city's argument that the case be dismissed was "not persuasive."

The suit claims that the deal the city struck with Chicago Parking Meters LLC. gives the private company illegal policing powers because it is allowed to write tickets for meter violations. "This is one of the problems with these deals," Clint Krislov, the lead attorney for the group that filed the lawsuit, told the Chicago News Cooperative, "that they sign over a property right to a company over how the streets are going to be regulated." (Rolling Stone report Matt Taibbi, in his new book on the financial crisis, called the sell-off "a blitzkrieg rip-off that would provide the blueprint for increasingly broke-ass America to carry lots of these prized toasters to the proverbial pawnshop.")

Now that Mayor Daley has almost entirely drained the meter reserve fund, some members of Chicago's City Council are trying to put the issue of before the voters in the 2011 municipal elections. Four aldermen, including newly-elected Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, introduced a resolution to put a question on the ballot asking, "Shall the City of Chicago re-negotiate the Parking Meter Privatization Agreement?" The resolution has been tabled for now. Meanwhile, Chicago Parking Meters LLC sold $600 million in bonds yesterday -- the same day the city confirmed it was postponing one of its own bond sales.