After renegotiating with the private investors that run Chicago’s parking meter system, Mayor Rahm Emanuel just couldn’t keep his mouth shut about the “public-private partnership.” During the 2015 mayoral race, he slammed opponents for voting against the new deal. “I made lemonade out of a lemon,” he boasted about the renegotiation — though whether it actually helped city residents is questionable.

But these days Emanuel is quiet about what may have been the shadiest and most one-sided privatization deal in US history. His office didn’t make a peep about a recent annual audit — now a spring pastime of sorts in Chicago — which revealed that the meters raked in $134.2 million in 2017, all of which went to the likes of Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley and Abu Dhabi’s state-owned investment arm.

Why the silence from City Hall? Well, it’s not exactly good news that the investors are an estimated three years from recouping the entire $1.16 billion they paid for the meters. That means every cent of revenue beyond operating costs from there on out will be pure return on investment — for the next sixty-three years.