Gov. Rod Blagojevich rode up on his white horse last week with a $91 million loan to postpone mass transit cuts and a promise to work hard to solve the funding crisis before that loan was spent. Since he also repeated his promise to veto a very good bill already on the table, you might be tempted to assume he had a germ of a reasonable alternative up his sleeve.
Dream on.
The best the governor has been able to come up with is an additional $200 million in loans tucked into a record $25.4 billion capital bill hatched overnight and passed by the Senate on Tuesday. That should keep the trains and buses running until sometime next summer, and if the General Assembly hasn’t fixed the funding problem by then, the transit agencies don’t have to pay the money back. But they’re sunk.
Blagojevich says the $200 million will “buy some time,” but what it would really do is buy more trouble.
The aged fleets aren’t getting any younger, and they aren’t getting the maintenance they need, either. Every day without a transit bill is another day closer to bankruptcy for the Chicago Transit Authority’s retiree health-care plan. When that runs out later this year , the CTA will have to pay those costs — up to $70 million a year — from its operating budget. The employee pension fund is drying up too. The CTA’s unions have agreed to contribute significantly more of their earnings and accept reduced retiree benefits if the General Assembly comes through with an adequate long-term funding source for transit. Failure to take them up on the offer has already cost the CTA millions.
The bill on the table would cement that bargain, but Blagojevich hates the part about raising sales taxes to pay for transit. Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) has refused to take it up, frustrating many members of his own party who believe they have the votes to pass it. Instead he’s hoping the House will go for the monstrous capital bill — even though it would be financed by a massive expansion of gambling, always a non-starter in Springfield. The capital bill thrusts $200 million at transit with a promise, but no plan, to get the job done later.
That’s not just putting the transit problem on hold; it’s making it worse. If Blagojevich or Jones has an actual idea to fix the transit system, let’s hear it. If not, they should get out of the way.
