Last week, a jump in meter rates across Chicago was followed by a spike in talk from the city's mayoral candidates about how they would address the 2008 meter lease. That deal gave a Morgan Stanley-backed consortium control of the city's meters through 2084 in exchange for $1.1 billion, the vast majority of which is already spent. Yesterday, three guests on WBEZ's 848 picked up on the topic during a segment about the mayoral campaign and the future of transportation in Chicago. On the show, Aaron Renn, who runs the Urbanophile website, made the case that the meter system could, indeed, be bought back from the Morgan Stanley group at a fair market price. "I think anything is negotiable and we can and should pursue that," he said. Renn pointed out that in getting the meters back, the city would give itself a revenue-generating device:

This notion that we've already spent the money, so we can't give them the money back, so we can't repurchase it, I think is not entirely accurate. We did spend the money on a lot of things maybe we shouldn't have. But, don't forget, even if we had to give the money back we also get the revenue stream back. And that revenue stream, from the meters, could be used to back bonds that could be used to repurchase them.

He went on to suggest how that could possible work: the city could create some kind of parking authority that could float bonds backed by revenues from the purchased-backed meters, in addition to some city-backed debt. Remember, as of this past summer, the Morgan Stanley group was slated to take in during 2010 more than three times the $20 million in meter revenues the city collected before the lease. And after the most recent round of meter rate hikes, it's likely those profits will increase going forward.

To be sure, the other guests on the show were a bit more skeptical that the city could pull off such a transaction. But Renn's idea about how Chicago could remake the notorious meter deal is definitely an interesting one.