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Sen. Don DeWitte, ranking Republican on the Senate’s Transportation committee, said the deal would leave in place the three “service boards” that operate transit in Chicago and the suburbs, and provide new oversight powers to a “newly empowered” RTA, the agency that currently handles some financial oversight for the region’s transit agencies.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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To many Illinois taxpayers, this sounds more like taxpayer abuse than reform.
Tony & Brando are all in Springfield today to push thru +$730 mil transportation bill w zero layoffs, zero cuts, zero reforms for are public sec heroes with ridership way down (-40%?)!!, CRAZY!!!…will JB keep the knee pads on or stand up for taxpayers??
Without service cuts to match actual customer demand for the RTA’s product and with the removal of the 50% farebox recovery rate, the RTA will be right back here again in a few years. Their future ‘ask’ will be far greater than the $1.5 billion in confiscated taxpayer money the currently demand.
Yes. This means layoffs at all levels of the RTA.
Yes. This means fewer trains and buses. The ones that remain will have a higher utilization. Maybe.
Don’t cut suburban public transit in favor of the incompetent, crime ridden CTA.
Cut to match incoming money or privatize it.
Again, duplication of management that keeps three times as many people needed employed on the taxpayers dime.
Nope. Duplication of service. There are too many trains and buses for the amount of paying customers carried. There is no excuse for running mostly empty trains and buses.
At current costs they could subsidize a Uber or Lyft and save money for the taxpayers.