As a reminder: The transit bill passed in the middle of the night. The bill’s text was released at 11:02pm, mere hours before the bill was voted on, with revenue provisions and other changes nowhere to be found in prior versions.

And the reason why is apparent in the bill’s egregious provisions, rushed through to prevent a proper civic debate.

• First, the funds generated are well in excess of the reported need, yet the new money will be released to the transit authority regardless of how well they manage it.
• Second, the primary funding mechanism is a “rob Peter to pay Paul” shift from road repair and construction funds.
• Third, the bill’s toll increase provision came out of left field, doesn’t seem to be needed in any objective fashion, and at any rate have no relationship to “transit” at all.

Here are the details:

The money

The new transit authority is going to receive $1.5 billion in total new revenue, split between $1.06 billion from road fund diversion and $478 million in sales tax increases.

That’s a huge amount which far exceeds the projected budget shortfall of about $250 million (as calculated by the RTA itself) for 2026 and even the $700 million annual shortfall for 2027. It is often said that Illinois doesn’t have a revenue problem but rather has a massive spending problem. This instance of massive overspending seems to prove that point.

And already, even though the bill calls for service standards and coordination among the three agencies of the CTA, Pace buses and Metra, the CTA has already made announcements for how it will spend its share of the extra money, betraying the promise that spending would be newly coordinated and planned by the new central governing body.

What’s more, some of the elements that have been touted as achievements in the new system are not even guaranteed to occur at all, since “fare capping” (a form of a day or weekly pass in which you don’t have to buy the pass at the outset but fares stop being charged as if you had bought it) is identified in the bill as “subject to appropriation.”  And despite rhetoric, there is nothing in the bill ensuring that any particular suburb-to-suburb commute will improve and a significant likelihood that middle-class suburbs will be left out to dry due to the focus on “equity” and density in the service standards.

What we need instead: rather than just proclaiming that the new governance structure will result in more focus on efficiency, innovation, coordination, and systematic planning, we need accountability, with a workable plan to claw back and re-allocate the cash if agencies use it to pad their workforce, boost pay at the behest of the unions whom the legislators depend on for re-election, spend without evaluating effectiveness, or simply fail to give suburbs their fair share. 

The switcheroo

As mentioned above, over $1 billion of the new transit money will come from diverting funds from the existing road fund. So what will happen to our state-funded roadway system when all that money—amounting to about 20% of the annual revenue—is shifted to transit? There are only two options: Either the state has been overtaxing us by 20%, or our roadways will be 20% worse off, and neither is acceptable. More cynically, it is entirely conceivable that Democratic leaders were fully aware that this would harm IDOT’s ability to keep our roads maintained, but that they were so intent on solving the current “transit cliff” that they set the stage for a future “road maintenance cliff” by using a depleted road fund as the basis for more gas tax hikes.  After all, it’s always politically easier to increase an existing tax for a routine government expenditure facing shortfalls than it is to find brand-new revenue for brand-new state government spending.  Watch out: there’s surely more to come.

The tolls

Lastly, as the Daily Herald confirmed in its reporting, the new 45 cent per on/off ramp toll will not go to transit at all but will go to the tollway, “one of the wealthiest agencies in the state.”  The Herald cites Senate Republican Leader John Curran:

“This came out of left field…. The case can be made always on future build out, expansion and capital, but that case was never made.”

The paper also quotes our local State Rep. Mary Beth Canty (the incumbent Democrat in District 54, just north of District 53): “These decisions are never easy. I know that the cost of living is incredibly high right now. But increasing and expanding service means that we need more capital dollars to do that. The quicker that we can start expanding our transit options for people so they’re not forced to just take the tollways or drive, the better off we will all be.”

This quote implies the tollway would use its funds for transit purposes, but that’s untrue.  It’s also not true that tollway and “regular” road fund are commingled in any way so that toll increases can offset the loss of other revenue. The Illinois Tollway’s revenue and expenditures are entirely separate. Don’t be fooled by the fact that the 45 cent toll hike equates to about $1 billion and this is very similar to the amount diverted from the roads fund to transit. There’s not actually any relationship.

In other words, this move is just another case of unnecessary overspending.

So far as I can tell there has been no comment from any Tollway officials.   The Herald’s explanation of the toll hike? The provision satisfies powerful labor unions concerned about diverting money from the Road Fund. In other words, they knew their union members would be getting less work on freeways due to the diverted money and wanted more tollway construction work, even if it comes in the form of rebuilding projects that wouldn’t under ordinary circumstances have been considered needed.  Nowhere can I find any reporting indicating that the tollway was starved for money or roads were deteriorating – though even if that had been true, legislation related to the tollway did not belong in this particular bill in any case.

Fundamentally, at a time when we are called upon to be mindful of the wise use of both money and natural resources, for the tollway to tear up roads and rebuild them before the end of their useful lifespan just because the horse-trading that compelled it was deemed necessary to get the bill over the finish line, would be a waste of both of these.

So where does this leave us? The transit bill has created a massive $1.5 billion tax hike, results in inefficient or overspending on transit and the tollways, while setting us up for a “road cliff” for ongoing road maintenance.

This is not OK.

Too often people shrug and say, “this is just how the sausage is made.”  Illinoisans have accepted that for far too long, and we see the consequences repeatedly – in our tax burden, the lack of value-for-money in our government services, the structural deficit, and the decisions companies make repeatedly to relocate elsewhere or demand subsidies to locate here.

Illinois, we must do better!