Transit riders, stand down. Your crisis has been rescheduled for Nov. 4.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who has been less than no help at all in the first real effort to get the region’s mass transit system back on track, came up with a $24 million funding advance Wednesday to keep the Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses running.
The governor hopes to buy enough time for lawmakers to finish the job some of them are just now starting. Senate President Emil Jones has set hearings on a mass transit funding bill for Monday — the very day the CTA planned to eliminate 39 bus routes and lay off more than 600 employees. The CTA will avoid big service cuts and higher fares for now, if the Regional Transportation Authority board on Friday approves the governor’s quick fix.
Leave it to Jones and Blagojevich to spring into action right in front of a speeding train. Over in the House, Republican leader Tom Cross has been standing on the tracks as the train bears down, holding up a hard-fought measure to reform and refinance mass transit because there’s not enough in it for Downstate drivers. Last week, a spokesman for Cross characterized the transit bill as “a good first step.”
First step?
It has been 11 months since the CTA released its 2007 budget proposal and said loud and clear that it had a $110 million operating deficit.
It has been almost four months since the agency spelled out the cuts it would have to make if the legislature didn’t act. (It’s more than three months past the legislature’s scheduled adjournment date, but that’s another story.)
The CTA’s budget was roundly criticized — by lawmakers, tax watchdogs and this page — for its sketchy reliance on many more millions from Springfield. Waste, mismanagement and inefficiencies, all set out in an Illinois auditor general’s report, would have to be addressed before the public would support more funding.
Transit leaders took up that challenge and produced a bill to reform and refinance the entire system. The measure would overhaul the Regional Transportation Authority, giving it broad oversight of the CTA, Metra and Pace. It would provide a long-term funding source for mass transit, mostly from a six-county sales tax. It would give the suburbs more influence on the transit boards and adjust the funding distribution formula for the first time in 25 years. It also includes a plan to restructure the CTA’s retiree benefit plans, which are on the brink of collapse. That bargain, struck with the CTA’s unions, is contingent on new funding.
Rep. Julie Hamos, who leads the House Mass Transit Committee, steered the bill to the House floor, where it came up 10 votes short of the supermajority needed to get it past Blagojevich’s promised veto. Cross and Co. weren’t about to take the heat for a tax increase to benefit Chicagoland commuters if it looked like the bill would die in the Senate anyway.
We’ve criticized the Republican leader of the House, but let’s remember: The Democratic governor and the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate have known for nearly a year that this day was coming.
Yet they let the transit system come right to the brink.
Jones recently told the CTA, hey, just hold off your cuts, and we’ll figure something out. CTA officials wisely said no, they would not put the transit system at more financial risk by spending money they didn’t have.
So Wednesday, it was Rod to the rescue! Just apply next year’s money to this year’s problem, the governor said. We’ll front you some cash, and we’ll get it all worked out by November.
Don’t hold your breath.
