Leaders Optimistic for Transit Deal, Details Still Unsettled
A CTA Brown Line train.
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With the clock ticking down on a return to Springfield for lawmakers in the fall veto session, leaders are optimistic there will be a deal on reforming and funding Chicago-area mass transit.
We spoke to Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) on the radio Thursday and asked about the status of a transit reform and funding bill which lawmakers have targeted for passage during veto session next month.
Buckner said he’s confident there will be a deal on governance reform and funding.
“I believe we’re gonna have both,” Buckner said. “We’re gonna get this done. We’re gonna get this done during veto session and the people of northeastern Illinois will see a transit reform package that will work for them from a governance and structure standpoint, but also from a revenue standpoint.”
Buckner admits, and other sources confirm, that there is yet to be an agreement on either component of a deal, which Buckner referred to as “still working out details.”
He wouldn’t say if a broad-based tax like the widely-panned tax on deliveries that was included in the Senate bill that passed that chamber but not the House would be included in the legislation.
“Anything that we do that is going to require buy-in from folks around the state has to have some benefit for folks around the state,” Buckner said. “This is not just a CTA bill or RTA bill or Metra or Pace bill. We have to talk about SMTD in Springfield, MTD in Champaign-Urbana, and MetroLink in the Metro East. This has to be a statewide transit bill.”
A Senate Republican presented some revenue ideas in a conservative media publication recently, which included using revenues from interest on the state’s rainy day fund to pay for transit, but multiple Democrats called those ideas “dead on arrival.”
