RTA Tax Hike - Red Alert
Opening Elgin’s Daily Courier-News to the editorial page yesterday (or today in the Sun-Times), I found a companion opinion piece to go with a front page story on the RTA’s need (desired) for more money.
So, I read the editorial, entitled,
Ideas neededIn the middle is this paragraph about former Jacksonville state representative Jim Reilly, who is the new RTA Chairman:
to improve,
fund transit
RTA Chairman Jim Reilly is blunt about the need for more money. The political reality is that neither the RTA nor the state Legislature will approve a change in the funding formula that cuts anyone a smaller piece of the pie.I mentioned in an earlier article that a push for higher RTA taxes is on the track. I see no one fighting it, yet former State Senator Jack Schaffer has potential as a new Metra Board member.
[Does that sound like the situation with State Aid to Education, anyone?]
And all three of the region’s transit agencies already are using capital funds to meet operating expenses, a recipe for disaster if continued for even a short length of time.
The solution, therefore, is a bigger pie.
How to make that pie bigger will be a key question for the collaborative effort. Will it come from more state aid? An increase in the regional sales tax? Higher fares?
On the back page is one of those re-runs of how you can help the environment, with one very interesting addition (and I'm not talking about the Dan Ryan):
CarpoolThe main political purpose of the web site is to get your email address and commitment to support higher taxes, in my opinion.
Take a bus
Bypass the Dan Ryan Expressway during construction
Use Pace’s “vanpool” service
Ride your bike, or walk and
Log on to RTA’s new Web side www.movingbeyondcongestion.org
Then, at a key time in the legislative process, RTA can solicit you to email your legislators to support a bill that will raise your taxes.
Or, am I being too cynical?
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Posted first on McHenry County Blog, of course.
6 comments:
Is public transportation a good thing?
"Is public transportation a good thing?"
Sometimes Yes, sometimes No. Depends how the specific mass transit program is being run.
Be hard pressed to say that CTA is being run well, what with all the cost overruns kicking up in the news. The CTA is starting to look like Millenium Park, Part 2, at least in terms of cost overruns (certainly not finished product).
Metra (commuter rail) looks to be a pretty well run operation. I tend to think that's primarily due to the fact that they have to share tracks and rail line access with the private sector railroads, so you've got to have efficency there.
Looks to me like they (the RTA) just want to get a nice fat tax increase from all the 'burbs', and are then saying "Trust Us" in how we decide to spend all that excess cash.
Sorry, that approach just is not going to fly.
If the RTA wants a tax increase, they better (a) Have a plan that sells to the public, & (b) Stick to the plan (no "bait & switch").
Well, if you don't expand public transportation, then enjoy more bad traffic. Maybe in the early 80s it was OK for the burbs to basically depend on cars. Not anymore. And have you seen the price of gas? Anyone think that price is going down? Did you see Crain's cover story this week? "Gas prices choke $5 billion out of local economy" You can dicker about the CTA all you want, but most people would agree it's time for more public transportation for more people, especially in the burbs.
Couldn't a tax increase be better used to fund our woefully underfunded schools or pay our underpaid teachers more?
Couldn't it better be used to improve our county health facilities? To make sure seniors (the most vulnerable amongst us) are provided for? The thought of having a senior choose between food and medicine while people are watching TV on buses really makes me angry.
What about improving our crumbling infrastructure? Providing disaster prepardness? What if those tornadoes hit our area? Are we really prepared for it? How about increasing the pay for police and fire personnel, those that put their lives at risk every day to protect us?
There are so many other places this money could be better spent...
ps. you can't argue against funding public transportation. It's a political no-no. But you can say there are more 'politically correct' needs for funding, and that obscures the argument greatly. i.e. by making public transportation's pie bigger, you are not making someone else's pie bigger. Enlist their aid in helping you prevent the transportation pie from getting bigger.
Use the bureaucracy against itself.
The lack of response is interesting.
It sure is easy to rip spending, but much more difficult to decide if programs should be cut.
Cal just doesn't have the courage to go that far.
And people wonder why the ILGOP is in such bad shape. It is posts like the above, where they yell and scream about taxes, but don't have the courage to provide solutions.
Cal, you forgot to mention that Reilly is a REPUBLICAN, a former REPUBLICAN colleague of yours in the Illinois House, and a former REPUBLICAN administration official.
Another one of those downstream media mistakes?
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