Chicago Daily Observer

City Hall is planning another subsidy for Block 37 — this time a three-phased bailout of an el station under construction there that’s running more than $100 million over budget.

Under plans that the Chicago Transit Authority board is scheduled to consider on Wednesday, the city would provide roughly $20 million in additional tax-increment financing funds for the “superstation” beneath the mixed-use project rising at Block 37, Crain’s has learned.

In addition, the CTA in several stages over the past year or so has poured an extra $60 million to $70 million of its own money into the project, despite its shortage of capital funds, sources say. And developer Joseph Freed & Associates, which is building the retail and residential structures on top of the station, reportedly has agreed to absorb about $19 million of the cost overruns.

When Mayor Daley says, “Ours is a 1920s system. It’s costly and inefficient,” you’d be excused for thinking he’s talking about local government.

Instead, it’s the CTA, which the mayor has suddenly realized is a mess.

This afternoon he announced that the agency will borrow and bond its way to improving service. This will be welcome news to riders who have watched the transit system deteriorate dramatically over the two decades Daley has been in office, and perplexing news to everyone wondering why Daley has been unable to find a management team interested in doing this before now.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s proposal to make Illinois one of the first states to offer free rides on public trains and buses to senior citizens sounds good, so who, the governor himself has asked, could possibly oppose it?

Plenty of people.

Some critics question the proposal’s costs and fairness, while others say it amounts to a naked ploy to win political points by handing out freebies. Still others say it’s something they might otherwise support, but they fear the last-minute initiative could lead to the defeat of a funding bill meant to bail out mass transit, which had seemed close to becoming law.

Key Illinois lawmakers appeared ready Thursday to back Gov. Blagojevich’s surprise offering of free bus and train fare for senior citizens in order to avert a Jan. 20 meltdown of the CTA.

His move to end the bitter, six-month transit funding dispute came after the House and Senate narrowly approved a bailout package boosting the sales tax in Cook and the collar counties by a quarter of a percentage point and imposing a tax on Chicago real estate transactions.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich raised the stakes in the political battle over funding Chicago-area mass transit, saying he would only endorse a sales-tax increase lawmakers sent him Thursday if they also agree to give senior citizens free rides on local trains and buses.

Cornered by fellow Democrats after nearly a year of maneuvering on both sides, Blagojevich made the brand new demand as he sought to soften the political damage of breaking his long-held vow to veto a sales tax increase.

At the peril of veering from constant criticism of the Chicago Media, our editors have found reasons to cheer on our local publications on a variety of issues.

Here are 5 top examples of good reporting that made it through to publication, and even had follow-ups in some cases.

1) The CTA is in financial trouble. We not only know about it from 1st hand experience, all of the major media outlets carried stories about financial problems in our mass transit systems, an even considered a variety of proposals (including-gasp-higher fares) to fix the issue. Abstenteeism, lack of riders, muddy minded management, poorly planned capital projects all received at least a scrutinizing glance.

2) TIF District Mania. Ben Joravsky at the Chicago Reader has been accused of being obsessed with TIF districts: good for Ben. In Ben Joravsky and the Chicago Reader there is finally some oversight ... Read More...

If it’s a good idea, it shouldn’t take all that long to get it going.

By many accounts, Chicago took only four years to rebuild and obliterate just about all signs of the 1871 fire that destroyed downtown and most of the city.

Reversing the flow of the Chicago River—an engineering marvel of its time—took 13 years from conception until its 1900 finish. Literally raising the city a half dozen feet out its swampy bottom took six years in the mid-1850s, a mere 30 years after the city’s founding.

Then there’s block 37.

It’ll be almost two decades since the city demolished an entire block in the heart of the Loop before the mixed-use development, including a superstation for CTA “express” service to the airports, is completed, and that’s still just a projection. Add another 20 years or so, ... Read More...

That question is asked and answered in the affirmative by the Illinois Policy Institute, a free-market think tank, in its thought-provoking new analysis: “CTA looking in all the wrong places: Sustainable solution requires new thinking and real reforms.”

I can’t remember anyone seriously and convincingly making such a claim since the early 1970s when, as the Chicago Daily News urban affairs reporter, I started covering the CTA. That’s when it became conventional political wisdom that mass transit should be considered to be a public utility requiring a public subsidy. Hell, I even bought it.

Except for this: How many public utilities (e.g., the electric and gas companies) operate like the CTA, with their consumers paying only about half the costs, while taxpayers pick up the other half? After more than three decades of shoveling money at mass transit, without success or surcease, and as state politicians flop around ... Read More...

Iraqi parliament has shown more courage in solving its problems than Illinois legislators

For all of the Iraqi parliament’s flaws, I would trade it straight up for the crowd that we’ve got in Springfield. Ridiculous, you say? Then, consider what both have accomplished. First, the Illinois state government: (This space left intentionally blank.)

That’s right, nothing. Maybe the Iraq parliament hasn’t done much more but think about its challenges compared with Illinois’ crew. Iraq has to repair centuries of tyranny and brutalization. The country is split in three, marked by a centuries-long and sometimes bloody religious feud. With virtually no experience with self-government, the Iraqis are expected to come up instantly with a government and culture that respects democratic values.

Hey, you, sitting there on your train or bus, have you had enough yet? Sick of this ritualistic dance about mass-transit “doomsday”? Fed up with the endless maneuvering over fares and taxes? Isn’t there some “long-term” solution to this mess that would free us from this exhausting exercise? Yes, there is: telecommuting. And you should be demanding it. Now. When you’re fed up.

John Tillman, Chairman & CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, a group that makes frequent editorial contributions to the Chicago Daily Observer, will be a guest on WLS-890 tomorrow Wednesday, November 1 at 9AM.

Tillman will speak about the CTA and Illinois Budget with radio host, Jerry Agar.

As the Chicago Transit Authority lurches towards another mass transit doomsday, one wonders if there is anyway to apply the brakes to this runaway train?

Austerity and economy are two words which have been permanently banished from the vocabularies of local bureaucrats and politicians. Faced with an imminent budget crisis, the only solution proposed is more government spending to bail out the profligate transit agency. The Illinois General Assembly, which cannot manage to get its own financial house in order, must rescue the CTA, once again.

Under the administration of Frank Kruesi, the former head of the CTA, money flowed like water as the transit agency embarked upon an ambitious rebuilding and construction maintenance program. Older elevated stations were to be modernized or replaced. Train platforms were to be enlarged to accommodate longer trains. Remodeled stations were to be made fully accessible to the handicapped. New technology was ... Read More...

Al Gore is to receive a Nobel prize for his crusade against global warming, which was the focus of his documentary movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Back in Chicago, where Rich Daley has been mayor for 18-plus years, where corruption flourishes, and where property taxes are about to surge, there is also an “inconvenient truth” – namely: that Chicagoans love their mayor. Polar icecaps may be melting, and Al Sharpton may be invading Chicago, but there has been no cooling of popular affection for Daley. Not yet.
There are times – indeed, many times – when the mayor appears to be frazzled, fumbling, bumbling, and nearly incomprehensible, but these shortcomings are offset by the urban “livability index” theory. In short, when crime rates are declining, education performance is increasing, taxes are tolerable, city services are acceptable, property values are stable or growing, the economy is robust, and the city ... Read More...

Why have Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Illinois General Assembly had such a difficult time agreeing on a transit budget?

When a dispute turns deep, bitter, personal and prolonged, something more than just disagreement over ways and means and outcomes is going on. Mere negotiation—“You give me a little more of this and I’ll demand less of that”—doesn’t work anymore. The parties are out of touch with reality—probably because it changed while they weren’t looking. To help get our leaders back in touch, here’s the transit reality check they’ve been missing

Governor Blagojevich’s last-minute bailout spared CTA riders long-threatened doomsday hikes in fares and cuts in services—for the moment. Still, without a permanent tax hike to close the budget gap of $110 million a year the CTA is likely to slash bus routes and raise fares to as much as $3 a ride. At the same time, the local property tax machine is gearing up to send out property tax bills that will jump as much as 100 percent for some home owners. And what’s the city’s response to this pending crisis?

Once again, Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the legislature provided the Chicago Transit Authority with an 11th hour financial reprieve that has forestalled the need for its planned “doomsday” budget. Although aid from the state is largely welcomed, it has again resulted in the sidetracking of an idea whose time is long overdue: a more rational fare structure that reflects costs incurred by the CTA.

Just as the Chicago Bears are on the verge of a quarterback “controversy,” Chicago Mayor Daley is in the throes of a police superintendent controversy. He wants to replace Dana Starks, the mercurial interim superintendent—but he can’t find the right replacement.

In choosing a police superintendent, rank matters. Family history matters. Political connections matter. And, most importantly, being an “insider” matters. The so-called “culture” of the department decrees that a non-Chicagoan, somebody from another city, cannot win or earn the trust of rank-and-file police officers.

But, in the ongoing, fruitless search to replace the departed Phil Cline, the selection criterion has changed as the political, bureaucratic and racial environment has deteriorated – both inside and outside of the department.

Cline resigned April 2, amid headlines of barroom brawls involving off-duty cops. One beat a female bartender, and six beat four businessmen. In the special operations section (SOS), a supposedly elite ... Read More...

They should have let the CTA, Metra and Pace cut service and raise fares this week. They still can go ahead with it, and it wouldn’t have been “doomsday.”

This is contrary to the given wisdom about “ticking clocks” and the approach of our ruination. Everyone meekly accepted the idea that fewer buses and trains running in Chicago and suburbs would be a disaster for “all of us.” They RTA board—the overseer of the region’s transit systems—said they no choice but to grab tens of millions of dollars from next year’s budget to keep service going, or else we would have strangled ourselves on—take your pick—traffic gridlock, suffocating fog and economic disaster. Or all of the above.

This is nuts.

Spending next year’s revenues isn’t too far removed from what millions of American homeowners did by taking out mortgages they could barely afford today, never mind when their ... Read More...