Legislator tries to head off transit 'crisis'

July 22, 2005
By Jon Davis
Daily Herald



The chairman of the Illinois House's Mass Transit Committee issued a blunt warning Thursday to Chicago-area transit agencies: No brinkmanship.

State Rep. Julie Hamos, an Evanston Democrat, told top transit officials gathered with the Metropolitan Planning Commission in Chicago that legislators realize the Chicago Transit Authority and Pace will have budget deficits again in 2006, but the agencies shouldn't count on increased funding from Springfield.

Hamos stressed that while legislators won't act on transit funding until the fall of 2006, lawmakers don't want another “crisis atmosphere” as 2006 transit budgets are debated.

“We won't work well in that,” she said, looking at the table where Regional Transportation Authority Chairman James Reilly and CTA President Frank Kruesi were seated at the Union League Club of Chicago.

Hamos laid out a four-step plan to find more money for the region's public transit system, starting with ways to involve the public. Then, legislators, transit agencies, local officials and community groups must decide what the region needs from transit service, before moving on to discussing from where and whom the money will come. Then and only then can everyone decide how to divvy up the new money, she said.

As for where to find more money, Hamos said all ideas are on the table. Which, she added, doesn't automatically mean raising the collar counties' RTA sales tax rate. That rate is currently 0.25 percent, while the tax rate in Chicago and suburban Cook County is 1 percent.

“That's really not the agenda,” Hamos said. “I'm agnostic on that myself, (but) if it's not the sales tax, it has to be something else.”

The transit funding debate will get serious only when Congress passes the long-overdue federal transportation bill.

Once it does — expected any day now — and everyone sees which projects are and aren't getting federal help, then the agencies can really begin debating what the region needs, who should provide it and how to pay for it.