INTRODUCTION

The CTA, Chicago Transit Authority, together with Metra and Pace bus, is facing an unprecedented crisis: they are encountering a $226-million shortfall on their $2.2-billion 2007 operating budget, and estimate that the transit system requires an additional $10 billion in capital funding over the next five years. Without sufficient capital funding at a structural level, the three agencies’ investments in stations and tracks would be slowed down, and the acquisition of new of buses and trains would be halted. Without sufficient operating funding to cover day-to-day operations and maintenance, the mass-transportation system is under the threat of more than 50% of fare hikes and deep service cuts (CTA Official Website, 2007).

       As a matter of fact, for a long time, CTA, Metra, and Pace have lacked the funds they need to operate, maintain, and modernize Chicagoland’s transit system. Out of deficit pressure, the CTA had proposed “doomsdays” twice earlier this year—Sep 16 and Nov 4—on which the agency would eliminate 39 bus routes, increase fares as much as $1, and lay off hundreds of CTA employees. The notices were posted on every CTA bus and train to keep the riders aware of the situation, and encourage them to join the campaign and exert pressure on their own state legislators; the CTA President Ron Huberman appeared to be the leader of this battle in order to keep the agency alive and continue the fight for a permanent funding solution.

       However, the situation soon evolved to a point that was far out of the reach of “Mr. CTA”. It turned out to be the lawmakers, high up in Springfield, that are the real key figures who were in charge to determine the fate of the Chicagoland mass transportation system. This paper aims to analyze the political forces of the state that control and shape the current[1] funding sources and structure of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA, which includes CTA, Metra and Pace).

STATE: ITS IMPACT AND BEYOND

        An investigation of the role of the state requires understanding the impact of the existent state policies, recognizing the state as representing and pursuing its own interest, and disaggregating the range of state actors and the complex ways in which they interact (Aleinikiff, 2001).

State Policies and Their Existent Impact

       The history of transit funding in Chicagoland has been one of crisis management, with the area’s urban and suburban transit providers lurching from one near-meltdown to another. In 1983, the state changed the transit funding formula for northeastern Illinois. Since then, Chicago and Cook County residents pay 1% sales tax and collar county residents pay a 0.25% sales tax to the RTA. The latter keeps 15% of sales tax revenues, and splits the remaining 85% between CTA, Metra and Pace at different levels, based on where they are collected.

       The funding formula was seen as a temporary solution and expected to expire after a few years. Between 1983 and 2004, the funding formula proved insufficient to pay for area transit operations. Metra had to raise fares almost continuously, while CTA, although later receiving the 15% of the tax not earmarked under the formula, was forced time after time to make massive service cut in 1997 and 1998. Later, in 2004, 2005 and 2006, the CTA experienced several additional funding crises; each time, at the last minute, state legislators would issue the agency a small grant to avoid service cut and promise to address the problem “shortly afterwards” (CTA Official Website, 2007).

       Yet today, 24 years after the “temporary” funding formula was last modified, the state legislators have still not yet come up with a lasting solution other than giving out “last-minute band-aids” each time when a crisis loomed. In 2007, when, due to a lack of new funds, severe service cuts and fare increases were announced, yet again, the Governor came up with two more “last-minute band-aids”—a $24 million borrowing from CTA’s own 2008 funding on Sep 13—three days before the first “doomsday” of the year, and a $27 million one provided by the Federal Transit Administration on Nov 2—two days before the second “doomsday” (Tribune Reporter, 2007; Greg, 2007a).

       At a glance, the Governor and the state legislators’ seeming indecisiveness has shaped the outdated funding structure and unstable funding sources of the CTA. But the question is that, with the awareness of the importance of investing in the region’s transit system for the sake of its people, economy and environment, what political factors could keep the stalemate going on and hinder the policymakers to make a decision?

State as a Self-interested Actor

       A close examination of the administrative state discloses a range of state-based variables that influence policymaking (Aleinikiff, 2001). The first and foremost variable is the desire for larger budgets. For the state, the goal is to avoid deficit each year, given its limited budget. Fiscal expert Rep. Frank Mautino (D-Spring Valley) said the state treasury is already expected to be $1.26 billion short during the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2008 (Meitrodt and Wronski, 2007). Therefore, the RTA’s proposal of seeking $210 million of operating budget in 2007, an ongoing increase in subsidies of $400 million a year, and a $10 billion over five years from any new state infrastructure program is a not request that Springfield can easily come up with a plan to deal with even in the short run, let alone a “permanent solution.”

       A similar yet differentiated variable is state’s desires to maintain its “do-ability”—in this case the effective implementation of its other priorities. Every legislator has his/her own “pet legislations”; and public transportation is simply not everybody’s priority. In Springfield, transit has taken a back seat to education, health care and electricity rates; the Governor himself favors a large revenue expansion for education (Glenn: 2007; Greg, 2007a).

A third state-based variable is the demands of consistency, hence avoiding adverse publicity. Having vowed to block any sales tax increase, current state Gov. Blagojevich worked actively against passage of the bill championed by RTA officials and State Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), and later by the House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago). This bill proposed an increase of the sales tax in the six-county region by 0.25%—on top of an additional 0.25% increase for the five collar counties—and a raise of the real-estate transfer tax in Chicago by 0.3% (Stanek: 2007). The governor fought to “stick to his words”, even though the slight tax increase is one of the few feasible, possibly long-term solutions with a chance of landing enough votes for approval, and the risk of vetoing the bill could cause much heavier economic burden for the working-poor families which the Governor had proclaimed to protect. The state-based variables analyzed above contributed to the current absence of a permanent funding solution for mass transportation.

Disaggregating the State

The state has a multifaceted nature. The relationships among state actors are both vertical and horizontal. The state’s multifaceted characteristic on the horizontal level is vital for understanding the policymaking process within this particular field. A bill that subsidizes the funding of the Chicagoland mass transportation is unlikely to pass unless the state senators and representatives from upstate and downstate reach a compromise in their constant bargain and negotiation process with each other and with the Governor.

While legislators and officials from upstate are worried about the negative influences that the CTA fare hikes and service cuts could bring to the people, business and environment in the metropolitan area, those from downstate are equally active as their upstate colleagues in seeking funding for downstate infrastructure—they actually see the CTA financial crisis as a bargain opportunity, to exchange support and to gain money for their regions.

Springfield Republicans have been demanding the infrastructure deal in exchange for the votes for a bailout of RTA. House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), who had previously been resisting, is now moving towards that direction (Hinz: 2007b). Some of the downstate Democrats support the mass-transit bailout for their Chicago-area colleagues also in the hope that they could win support for projects they need throughout the state.

The competition of resources was fierce, regardless of how badly the RTA was in need of the funding. At first, a casino bill came into the picture. The approval of the a land-based Chicago casino, whose bottom line revenue would be $150 million, appeared to be the only hope for providing desperately needed funding for the RTA after the sales tax bill got vetoed. With this promising revenue still falling far below what the three RTA agencies really need, the legislators, however, were not even considering it as 100% granted “RTA money”: Mayor Daley was pledging to devote 70% to infrastructure improvements; the remaining 30% would be left for the city's operating budget; Gov. Blagojevich, seeking to prop up his budget and pay for capital projects, wanted to charge the city $800 million for a gambling license; Sen. Ricky Hendon insisted that a share of proceeds should be funneled to economic development projects in depressed neighborhoods (Hinz: 2007b).

A recent proposal to save the mass transit is to divert $385 million in gas taxes collected in the six-county region to the RTA. However, a powerful south side Democrat, Jones said downstate senators are insisting on a deal that ties the CTA bailout to a statewide construction program. For decades, Jones said, lawmakers have linked mass transit and capital construction programs together at the same time. “They go hand in hand, and our downstate members are saying they’re not going to vote for anything to aid mass transit unless they have a capital bill.” (Long, 2007)

FUTURE MASS TRANSIT PICTURE AND THE STATE

For more than two decades, the CTA has witnessed difficulties of policymaking in the U.S. government system, within which it is sometimes hard to accomplish anything (Peters, 1993). The Chicagoland mass transportation’s struggle for funding has been thwarted by a large number of decision points in the state; however, the situation is not unique nationwide. Transportation systems in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, to name a few, have all experienced (and are probably still undergoing) financial crises. The circumstances of survival are not homogeneous per state, but have shown to be dependent on the “political conditions” in the state (Smith, 1987). Previous analyses shed light on two kinds of key figures that set the tone for such “conditions”.

The Governor

Research shows that governors affect state policymaking in a systematic way. Governors with greater control over the budget process will use those powers to deliver a higher proportion of policies that confer benefits to statewide versus more localized constituencies (Barrilleaux and Berkman, 2003). It is important to view the Chicagoland mass transportation as a statewide issue. Chicago, as the Illinois economic engine, fuels the state with a strong business economy. A healthy regional network of transportation is undoubtedly the major force that determines not only the economic development of Chicagoland but also that on a larger statewide level. However, in the 2007 and previous metropolitan transportation financial crises, the governor, being distracted by legislators from other regions, showed little determinacy and power over the control of the budget process.

In contrast, during the 1960s, the former New York State Governor Rockefeller showed much stronger influences on the budget process to fund the railroads and especially commuter lines serving the state’s major urban area. Determined to find a solution for the financial problems of the state public transportation projects in the spring of 1965, in less than three years(in November 1967) he proposed and the state legislators passed two laws containing several innovative provisions to cope with the problem. The most dramatic law was one authorizing a $2.5-billion Transportation Capital Facilities Bond Issue (Zimmerman, 1974). Not only has the decision about Chicagoland’s transportation funding taken much more time, but any funding sources that the Governor or any legislators have come up with are also under the radar screen of being shared with projects in other fields.

Collaboration with Other State Legislator: A Must

Both the governor and legislators influence policymaking in the U.S., as is intended in systems with powers shared across institutions (Peters, 1993). In this particular field, debates are constantly going on between legislators from different parts of the state—say between the urban and the suburban legislators, or specifically the upstate and downstate in Illinois. Collaboration is a must to achieve majority votes; upstate legislators’ “breakup” in the negotiations with their downstate colleagues at least implied two other ways that they should try: firstly, build collaborations with other legislators with shared interests; secondly, work with the downstate legislators to include their region into the Chicagoland mass transportation beneficiary picture.

Downstate legislators are not the “low-hanging fruits” to build such collaboration, because they are the ones that are competing with the same source of funding. It is more promising to build such collaborations with legislators who are in favor of environmental protection and energy shortage issues; businesses and business associations could also make good partners—because they both would largely benefit from a successful transit funding reform. The upcoming bid for the 2016 summer Olympic Games is an opportunity to include more and possibly nontraditional stakeholders into the picture.

Even if the collaboration with the downstate legislators is a must for the pass of the bill, the collaboration could go further than compromise of resources and exchange of votes. Upstate legislators can work with the transit authority to promote larger regional transportation coverage, extending the beneficiary to certain downstate areas, so that their legislators will be included in the advocacy team.

CONCLUSION

This paper analyzes the political forces of the governors and state legislators that control and shape the current funding sources and structure of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). State actors, rather than the transportation agencies themselves, are the key actors in this policymaking arena. Today, the role of the state, which has been using a “temporary” funding formula for more than two decades, generating insufficient funding for the mass transportation system and one financial crisis after another, is maintained by the existent state policies, the activities of the state to pursue its own interests, and the complex ways in which multifaceted state actors interact.

Chicago is not the only big city in the U.S. that does not receive sufficient funding for its mass transportation system. State legislators who determine to reverse the situation and strive for a “permanent solution” for the system should realize the current governor’s other priorities and limited power over the budget process, and establish collaborations with other legislators (including those from the downstate) in a reciprocal way.