MILLER: Reform, then revenue

A little-noticed bill passed both the Illinois House and Senate that will generate $300 to $400 million a year for local governments, including $95-127 million for the Regional Transportation Authority.

The bill (SB3362) will help capture sales tax revenue from more out of state retailers and in-state retailers who ship to Illinoisans in out of state locations.

The new money is not quite a fifth of the $730 million “fiscal cliff” that northeastern Illinois’ mass transit agencies are facing starting next fiscal year, but it’s a decent start. A down payment, so to speak. But, remember, the $730 million deficit is only for Fiscal Year 2026. It rises to $1.2 billion by FY31, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

Even so, not one Chicago-area transit official mentioned that new money in their testimony to the Senate Transportation Committee last week. Instead, most of them simply demanded lots more money and refused to consider any sort of structural management reforms.

But those structural reforms are very much needed. Just a few years ago, the Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tried to stop a pilot project to cut South Side Metra fares to CTA levels and increase train service on the South Side and south suburbs as well as increase the frequency of some Pace bus service. Why were they opposed to something that would help people? The CTA believed the proposal would reduce its revenues. So, once the pilot project got off the ground, the CTA refused to provide low-cost transfers between the lines and also prevented riders from using their CTA Ventra cards for Metra fares.

These inter-agency fights have gone on forever. And while there has been a little progress at cooperation among the CTA, Metra and Pace, it’s mostly because the transit bosses know that they have to make a decent show because that horrific fiscal cliff is staring them in the face. If they get the money, they simply cannot be trusted to not revert to their old ways.

“The governance model is not the problem here,” CTA President Dorval Carter defiantly told the committee. The problem, he said, is funding.

Carter’s logic doesn’t quite compute. The CTA is still operating on COVID-era federal subsidies, but rider discontent is rampant. Scheduling is a wreck. Stations, buses and trains are too often dirty. Security is a constant concern, and CTA’s efforts have been a laughable attempt at security theater. Train and bus routes have been slashed. The system is in tatters even with full federal funding.

Also, a lack of capital spending oversight led directly to a recent scandal at Metra that I told you about not long ago. Metra was caught spending tens of millions of dollars on a warehouse purchased outside of any sort of procurement rules.

The only transit chief who told the Senate committee that he understood the stakes was RTA Chairperson Kirk Dillard. “As you said,” he told committee chair Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago), “There’s going to be no new revenue without reform.”

Dillard is a former gubernatorial aide and a former Republican state Senator who faced down huge blowback from his own caucus years ago when he voted to raise sales taxes to fund mass transit. He’s one of the last old school “governing party” Republicans. And he told me that he greatly appreciated the extra state funding this year.

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has suggested two models for transit agency consolidation. One of them is “Integrate the RTA and the service boards into one regional transit entity.” Dillard has fully jumped on that recommendation.

Dillard told the committee the RTA wants to set regional standards for service and set a regional fare policy, wants greater oversight on capital spending, wants consolidation of staff and “There should be a review of board seats to ensure regional and balanced decision makings.”

The problem with that last bit is that suburban politicos view this consolidation idea as a Chicago takeover and Chicago folks think it’s a suburban power grab. Assistant House Majority Leader Marcus Evans (D-Chicago) told the Tribune recently that he was “adamantly opposed” to giving suburban officials control over the CTA.

So, Dillard most definitely has his work cut out for him. I think there is an appetite in the General Assembly for more transit funding, even above and beyond the fiscal cliff. But nobody wants to throw good money after bad, and regional mistrust is intense on this topic from all sides.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.