Yesterday the mass transit committee of the Illinois General Assembly met at Harold Washington college in downtown Chicago to discuss the looming transit crisis and new funding ideas.
The hearing began with testimony from the heads of RTA and the three service boards. CTA president Ron Huberman spoke about the severity of the situation, painting a bleak picture for Chicago’s millions of transit riders. In addition to the scheduled fare hikes and service cuts of November 4th, Huberman said that January would bring further reductions in service that would make the November cuts look light by comparison.
A chorus of further testimony from organized labor, civic and business leaders as well as citizens and advocacy groups, supported SB 572, a bill that would both reform the RTA and provide a source of long-term funding by raising sales tax a quarter of a percent and authorizing the City of Chicago to raise its Real-Estate Transfer Tax. Despite receiving broad support from groups as diverse as the Mayor’s office, transit workers’ unions, and local corporations, the bill is currently stalemated in the legislature due to opposition from suburban lawmakers and some of the governor’s key legislative allies.
A sense of frustration pervaded the hearing. Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), the chairwoman of the committee and principal sponsor of the bill, asked for suggestions for possible alternative funding sources, since “looking for other options is not an idle exercise at
this point”
One such suggestion was a proposed monthly tax of $5 on each parking space. The suggestion spurred much debate, with business leaders criticizing the tax as a poorly thought out increase in property taxes. The committee members had concerns about the feasibility of collecting such a tax, and whether it might have unintended consequences, since no such blanket parking tax exists anywhere else in the country.