By Ray Long and Monique Garcia. Richard Wronski contributed to this report from Chicago
Chicago Tribune
September 5, 2007
SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois House on Tuesday rejected a regional tax package to shore up funding for Chicago-area mass-transit systems, increasing the potential for fare hikes and service cuts at the Chicago Transit Authority and the Pace suburban bus agency.
House Democrats, led by Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago, provided the vast majority of the votes as only a handful of Republicans from the Chicago suburbs supported the measure. The measure fell 10 votes short, but Madigan said he hoped to make up the difference quickly before transit riders face "great hardship."
The CTA said it will go ahead with fare increases and service cuts Sept. 16 if it doesn't get a financial boost from the state.
The House needed 71 votes -- a three-fifths supermajority -- in the overtime session in order for the measure to take effect immediately. That is also the number of votes needed to override a promised veto by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who objects to the tax increases.
Despite urgent pleas for action from agency officials, Mayor Richard Daley and others, the issue of state funding for CTA, Pace and Metra has been mired in political infighting between legislative leaders and the governor that has led to a record-long overtime session of the General Assembly.
House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego said transit funding should be addressed at the same time that a broad-based capital program is taken up to fund construction of schools, roads, bridges and other projects.
"For us to say we're only going to take care of one component of a two-part problem is a mistake," said Cross, who voted against the proposal. Suburban drivers, he said, expect the roads to be widened because they are "sick and tired of sitting in traffic."
The transit proposal called for a quarter-cent sales tax increase in Cook County and a total half-cent increase in the collar counties, where the revenue would be split between mass transit and other transportation matters. The legislation also would give the City of Chicago the authority to increase its real estate transfer tax to help fund CTA workers' pension and retirement funds.
"Rarely is a vote so important," said Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), the lead sponsor and chairwoman of the House Mass Transit Committee.
Saying lawmakers had allowed the issue to reach the brink of crisis, Hamos beseeched her colleagues to act. "Please, let's not jump into this abyss," she said.
After the vote, Blagojevich, a Democrat, reiterated his idea of raising money for mass transit by eliminating a series of corporate tax breaks, a proposal that has gained little traction in the General Assembly.
"I believe a tax on working families for transportation is a backdoor fare hike, and I believe the legislature was correct in rejecting that approach," Blagojevich said in a statement issued after the vote.
Blagojevich pointedly called the rejected proposal "Speaker Madigan's tax increase," the latest political broadside the governor has fired at Madigan this year as they battle over the governor's expensive and expansive health-care and budget proposals.
"This is a bill that ought to have the support of a governor of Illinois who lives in the city of Chicago and within blocks of one of the most popular rapid transit lines in the city, that being the Brown Line," Madigan said.
Madigan said suburban Republicans should have supported the transit bill because it provides major funding for collar- county projects. He held out the possibility that more Republican lawmakers could be persuaded to vote for the bill.
The legislation would provide $1 billion for Metra to spend on construction projects. This year Metra says it plans to use about $60 million for operational expenses that should have gone to capital projects. Madigan said he will call the bill for a second time as soon as he secures the 71 votes necessary to pass the measure. The vote was 61-48, with two voting present. Hamos doubted the necessary 10 extra votes would be there in time for another vote this week but warned that the bill needs to become law quickly or there will be 400 fewer CTA buses on the streets on Sept. 17, the first Monday following the service cuts.
"That will impact hundreds or thousands of riders and will impact the streets as well, for the people who are driving their cars," Hamos said.
CTA President Ron Huberman called the vote, which he watched from the House gallery, a "disappointment." But he maintained that the measure stalled "not based on the merits of the bill, not based on the importance of the bill," but on the desire for a larger, more contentious construction bill.
"By our most conservative estimates, over 100,000 people will not have transit capacity in the city of Chicago on the morning of Sept. 17," he said.
Transit officials say no action in Springfield on a funding solution by the mid-September deadline would mean that the CTA increases cash fares from $2 to $2.50 for buses and $3 on trains during peak hours and that it eliminates nearly 40 bus routes. Pace increases, originally announced for Sept. 1 but delayed to coincide with the CTA's, would include raising paratransit fares to a standard $3 charge, from $2.25 in Chicago and $2.50 in DuPage, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.
Even if the House approves the bill, it faces an uncertain future in the Senate. A spokeswoman for Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), a major proponent of a capital bill, said he has not taken a position on whether the transit bill would be considered for a vote.
Cross said the continuing strained relations among legislative leaders of both parties and the governor are also factors in the impasse.
"I think somewhere, someday we've got to confront this fact that there's some questions out there about the ability to trust everyone, and I think we've got to work through that, and I think the sooner the better," Cross said.
|
