Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s nominees for the reconstituted Chicago Transit Authority board include two of the board’s current members, including its chairman.
Johnson’s proposed transit board picks, which are subject to City Council approval, are mandated by the state’s landmark transit funding and reform legislation, which took effect in June.
In addition to raising upwards of $1 billion a year for public transit, the law requires a shakeup of the boards that govern the CTA, Metra and Pace. The bill creates a new regional transit oversight body, the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, which is intended to be a more powerful version of the soon-to-be-defunct Regional Transportation Authority.
All current board members’ terms expire on Sept. 1, when their replacements are expected to be seated.
But board members are allowed to be reappointed, and the majority of the mayor’s picks already sit on one of the region’s transit boards.
The mayor’s nominees for the reconstituted CTA board include the board’s current chairman, Lester Barclay, an attorney who was originally appointed to the board by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. If approved by aldermen, Barclay would serve on both the CTA and NITA boards.
Barclay has previously criticized aspects of the new transit legislation — namely the increased oversight authority it gives to NITA.
“Under this new structure, practically all policies and operational decisions that previously received final approval from the CTA will now be subject to the final authorization by the NITA board — an arrangement that, while designed to promote coordination, risks diluting the local accountability and autonomy that have been essential to delivering responsive, community-centered service,” Barclay wrote in a Tribune op-ed last year.
“This bill marks the end of Chicago’s autonomy over its own transit system,” Barclay wrote at the time, though he also said he supported the new funding derived from the legislation and “the spirit of regional cooperation it represents.”
The mayor’s other proposed CTA board appointees are current board member Dr. Michael Eaddy, a pastor with degrees in theology and business administration whom Johnson first appointed to the board in 2024, and Oswaldo Alvarez, a current member of the RTA board and the executive director of the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation.
If okayed by the City Council, Eaddy would serve only on the CTA board while Alvarez, whom Johnson first appointed to the RTA board last year, would serve on both the CTA board and the NITA board.
Johnson’s other appointments for the new NITA board include current RTA board members Dennis Mondero and Natasha Jenkins. Mondero, whom the mayor is also nominating to serve on the Metra board, is a former chief administrative officer for the CTA. Jenkins is a labor and employment attorney whom the mayor is also nominating to serve on the board of suburban bus agency Pace.
Johnson’s final NITA board pick is Dee Atkins, the chief of community engagement and equity at Thresholds, an organization that provides healthcare and housing to people with mental health or substance abuse issues.
To serve only on the Metra board, the mayor is reappointing Christian Mariano Díaz López, whom he first named to the commuter rail board earlier this year. Díaz is an affordable housing developer who is also a co-chair at the transit-oriented development organization Elevated Chicago.
And to serve only on the Pace board, Johnson is nominating Karen Tamley, CEO of the disability rights organization Access Living. Pace is responsible for administering paratransit for people with disabilities throughout the entire region, including in the city of Chicago.
Johnson’s proposed picks come as the transit legislation takes away some of his power over the executive appointment process at the CTA, which has been led since early 2025 by an acting president, Nora Leerhsen.
The law dilutes the number of appointments the mayor of Chicago gets on the CTA’s board and also requires the blessing of the NITA board for the appointment of a new CTA head.
Johnson gets to appoint five members of the NITA board as do Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, whose proposed nominees the Tribune reported on last week, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has yet to make his nominations public. The other five NITA members will be appointed by the chairs of each collar county.
Even before the new legislation, the mayor struggled to exercise control over the CTA’s board.
Left off Johnson’s list of new appointees is current CTA board member Roberto Requejo, the former executive director of Elevated Chicago.
Requejo was among the board members who seemed to push back when Johnson attempted to install his former chief operating officer, John Roberson, to lead the CTA last year. Amid public pressure from transit activists who criticized Roberson’s lack of transit experience, Requejo was one of several board members who made it clear they wanted to see a broader search for a new leader.
Johnson never took Roberson’s name to the CTA board for a vote and Leerhsen has continued to lead the CTA on an interim basis since.
Johnson made a last-ditch effort to install a permanent CTA leader just weeks before the transit law took effect in May, when he wrote a letter directing the board to “move expeditiously” to find a permanent leader. The board never publicly took him up on that directive.
Also missing from the mayor’s list of new transit board appointees is Lily Diego-Johnson, a social worker and disability advocate whom Johnson appointed to the board to fill a vacancy this spring and who has served on the board for less than two months so far.
“Building a stronger regional transit system begins with appointing leaders who know our communities and understand the experiences of the people who rely on transit,” the mayor said in a statement Tuesday, “no matter where their journey begins or where it takes them, every rider deserves a system that works seamlessly.”
The City Council’s transportation committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday — though the mayor’s appointments are not on the agenda — and again next week.
