by Bob Roberts
WBBM
May 25, 2007

After months of asking legislators to decide how to fund to Chicago-area mass transit, the Regional Transportation Authority Thursday got specific.

It is asking the General Assembly to approve a package that would raise $452 million a year to pay everyday CTA, Metra and Pace operating bills.
  
It would not address the $10 billion in capital investment the RTA says is needed over the next five years.
  
"The public clearly wants more transit, not less," said RTA Chairman Jim Reilly when announcing the plan.  It's just a shell game to say you can do more with less.  You can't."
  
Approximately $322 million would come from increases in the sales and real estate transfer taxes.
  
The RTA seeks to increase its sales tax levy from 1 percent to 1.25 in Cook County, and from .25 percent to .75 percent in the collar counties.  In addition, it would seek to impose a three-tenths of one percent increase in the real estate transfer tax in the city of Chicago.
  
The RTA is counting on lawmakers to provide an additional $80.5 million in unspecified state funding in addition to renewal of the $50 million it has provided the region's paratransit operations for the past two years.
  
Half of the money raised in the suburbs would be placed in a new "Innovations Fund" that Reilly said would be placed under the control of county governments and would provide local government the flexibility to meet road or transit needs and could fund capital or operational needs. 
  
Although legislators have asked the RTA for months to pare down the list of 12 options in its "Moving Beyond Congestion" planning document, unveiled earlier this year, the specific proposals caught officials of at least one transit agency by surprise.
  
A Metra spokesperson said the agency learned of the specifics Thursday morning and said while it supports the overall goal of obtaining new funding, it wants to study the specifics over the holiday weekend before deciding if it can back them.
  
CTA President Ron Huberman said Thursday he was taking a neutral stand on the funding specifics.
  
Pace spokesperson Judi Kulm said the suburban bus and paratransit agency favors the proposal, so far as it has been spelled out.
  
"We're very encouraged that there's at least something on the table, that everybody's talking, that transit is out there and maybe something will happen," she said.  "The only thing is it's still a matter of negotiation with the RTA and the service boards as to how any new money would be spent."
   
Reilly called the CTA contingency plan unveiled Thursday  "dramatic and drastic," and said it underscores the urgency of the need.
  
Neither tax increase would even begin to address the agencies' capital needs.  Reilly said that requires a new state infrastructure program.