The MT Position

Posted by William R. Coulson
Member, RTA Board of Directors

Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) was established by state law to provide financial and planning oversight to the operations of the ‘service boards” — the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) (light rail and city bus), METRA (commuter rail) and PACE (suburban and paratransit bus), who actually provide the transit.

The RTA and the service boards have been warning Illinois political leaders for years that the system was seriously underfunded and heading for a serious breakdown. Last year an independent agency, the Illinois Auditor General, confirmed this financial crisis in a lengthy report. Simultaneously, the RTA and the service boards painstakingly formulated a “Moving Beyond Congestion” plan outlining their vision for strengthening and expanding the six-county region’s long-term transit, assuming new funds were available. Virtually every mayor and every county board in the six-county RTA region endorsed this plan.

Thus, there is no dispute that the financial crisis is real and that there is a long-term plan to significantly improve the system. Enter Illinois’ unique brand of politics.

The RTA is financed largely through fares, a sales tax imposed in the six counties and a state match of 25 percent of the sales taxes raised. So optimistic was the RTA board in December of 2006 that the 2007 budgets included as projected revenue more than $200 million in what was called “New Transit Funding.”

A bill was introduced in the Legislature to raise modestly the sales tax rate to generate this new revenue for the foreseeable future. The bill also proposed to significantly increase the RTA’s oversight authority of the service boards. The CTA and its unions even negotiated pension and benefits concessions, contingent on the bill’s being enacted. The Chicago media has consistently characterized this proposed dedicated funding of critical infrastructure as a “transit bailout.”

The governor, however, announced that he would veto the bill because it raised a “tax on people.” The state capitol, Springfield, became a welter of intrigue and distrust among the leaders, over a wide variety of issues — the most “poisonous” atmosphere statehouse veterans have ever witnessed. Legislators and the governor could not even pass a state budget until after months of overtime sessions. The governor called 17 different special sessions of the Legislature; the legislators finally just ignored these calls and did not even show up.

There was no budgeted “New Transit Funding.” The service boards’ 2007 budgets had to be amended accordingly to cut services dramatically, layoff employees, postpone maintenance and raise fares. The cuts hit the CTA and Pace first. These agencies announced that these cuts would become effective on Sunday, September 16, 2007. Springfield remained locked in gridlock. Then, four days before this “doomsday” deadline the governor announced that to forestall the cuts he would authorize the immediate advance to the RTA of the $37 million budgeted for the first six months of 2008 to paratransit service and senior citizen discounts. The governor wrote that a long-term resolution of state mass transit funding “is not far off.”

Once again the service boards amended their 2007 budgets to include this advance, and it fell to the RTA board to determine if it could approve these new budgets as “reasonable and prudent” under the RTA statute. Nine votes were required. In a contentious 10-2 vote, the RTA board approved this advance of next year’s moneys. I was one of the two “no” votes. To me, this was like a bad “pay-day loan,” except that even a pay-day loan has a reliable, dedicated source for repayment! One of the board members who did support the measure literally held his nose as he voted “yes.” So six months of next years’ paratransit and senior discount money is now gone — spent this year! Without new monies, next year’s cuts would have to be even deeper. But doomsday was averted for a few weeks.

More gridlock in Springfield. The bill to raise the RTA sales tax and to establish more RTA oversight got a majority vote in the Illinois House (61-48), but the sponsor withdrew it because it needed a super-majority (71 votes) to take effect immediately and to survive the promised veto by the governor. The CTA and Pace had no choice but to again plan for “doomsday” cuts, this time effective November 4, 2007. Again, layoff notices and route elimination notices went out. Community groups and the unions protested. This time, two days before “doomsday,” the governor announced that he had found $27 million in a state infrastructure bond fund that he would transfer to the RTA to stave off the cuts. Again, the governor wrote that a permanent “fix” “can be completed in the near future.” The Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate wrote that they “understood fully” the “urgent need” for a “major increase in stable, long term funding,” and pledged to work to that end “over the next seven to ten days.” This advance of capital funds had to be approved by the Federal government (late on a Friday afternoon in Washington!). Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and the Republican Bush administration agreed to the last-minute proposal, thus accomplishing in an hour the kind of statesmanlike bi-partisanship that has so far eluded Illinois leaders. Doomsday was again averted — for now. The “doomsday” cuts, now more severe then ever, were reset to commence now on January 20^th, 2008.

Yesterday, November 28th, the governor called his 18^th special legislative session, this time to consider only the mass transit crisis, saying, “we cannot afford more delays.” A new funding proposal had been touted by several legislative leaders — the dedicated transfer of regional sales tax revenues from gasoline sales to transit. This would provide a more modest sum to transit than would the increased general sales tax proposal, and it would leave a gaping fiscal hole in the general state budget (where the revenues would otherwise go). Many legislators, including those from downstate Illinois, insisted as a pre-condition the passage of a capital funding bill for highways and schools which would be funded by new casinos in Illinois. The gas sales tax bill failed by a vote of 57 -53 (60 votes are required). “Doomsday” faces us again on January 20.

What to make of it all? I have tremendous respect for the elected public officials who face the daunting task of balancing the state budget in the face of competing demands from constituents. They will have to decide ultimately how important mass transit is to the well-being and economic vitality of Illinois. And the people — who elect them — will have the final word on all this.

As an appointed board member of the RTA, I share the responsibility to provide the best transit to the people of the six-county region that the allotted financial resources will responsibly permit. If our elected leaders want a second-rate system, that is what they will get.

William R. Coulson is a Chicago attorney and former federal prosecutor, who was appointed to the RTA Board on April 1, 2007, by the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 9:06 am and is filed under Transit Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.