Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Illinois Budget’s New Taxes Face Serious Constitutional Challenges
June 12, 2026
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Audio and summary linked here.
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A mess of uncertainty and litigation is sure to follow.
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Why even bother spending millions for a train line for 75 passengers a day? You could fit 75 people onto a bus and do that trip for hundreds of millions cheaper. They want to spend millions to connect to Dubuque which is roughly the size of Mt. Prospect. It makes no sense.
75? Less when JB the Hutt and Alyson Arwady re-implement their worthless mask mandate on public transit. Then we’re back to running the trains and buses mainly to keep train crews and bus drivers busy hauling empty seats back and forth.
What the consultants won’t say is that the lion’s share of the startup costs is to install Positive Train Control on the old Illinois Central route. The system isn’t needed on lines that don’t have scheduled passenger service, so the Canadian National tracks this service would use were exempted from that unfunded mandate. This technology is frighteningly expensive to install and maintain and the already flat broke IDOT would have to fund most of it, with Federal taxpayers picking up the rest of the tab. The operating shortfall is simply excused away by transit advocates as normal for rail passenger… Read more »