A Chicago alderman told Pittsburgh City Council on Thursday to make sure it has a role in crafting any lease of city parking garages and meters to a private company.

"You are the ones whose feet are held to the fire," Leslie Hairston warned at a post-agenda meeting that Councilman Bill Peduto convened on the future of parking and the city's pension fund.

Ms. Hairston said Chicago City Council had no input on a 75-year lease of the city's on-street parking rights but approved the deal in 72 hours under pressure from Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration.

There was no public comment on the deal, and council received only limited information before its 40-5 vote to approve the lease, she said. Ms. Hairston, who voted no, represents Hyde Park and other southern neighborhoods in Chicago's 5th Ward.

She said Chicago needed the money to plug a hole in its operating budget.

In January 2009, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl proposed leasing 11 parking garages, and possibly meters along streets and in lots, in a plan to pump at least $200 million into the city pension fund. The fund is only one-third funded and at risk of a state takeover. As many as 18,000 parking spaces could be involved in the lease.

But council members have been skeptical.

Ms. Hairston's advice for council to take an active role came a day after the body's preliminary vote for an outside valuation of parking authority assets.

Representatives of Morgan Stanley, Mr. Ravenstahl's financial advisers, had discouraged the outside review, saying it could scare away investors. Morgan Stanley's infrastructure investment group also is the leading investor in Chicago Parking Meters LLC, the consortium that received Chicago's on-street parking lease.

On Thursday, with council members still fuming about the financiers' efforts to shut down their inquiry, Ms. Hairston told them they had every right to demand a third-party study.

She said Chicago aldermen had no time to discuss revenue-sharing, a short-term lease or other alternatives to the 75-year proposal from the mayor's office.

The city's inspector general later estimated that the $1.2 billion contract with Chicago Parking Meters was worth hundreds of millions of dollars less than the city might have received had it operated the meters under the same terms agreed to in the lease.

Pete Scales, spokesman for the Chicago finance department, disputed that report. Also, he said aldermen knew some details of the proposal in the months before Chicago Parking Meters was selected as the leaseholder.

In concluding her appearance Thursday, Ms. Hairston told the Pittsburgh council, "You all should be complimented for having the guts -- and I do mean the guts -- to take this on and to challenge it and to question it."

Council members were pleased with Ms. Hairston's insights.

"I'm really glad you made the trip," Councilman Patrick Dowd told her.

Ms. Hairston flew to Pittsburgh at her own expense.

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