Aldermen attempt to strip CTA, CPS funding from Emanuel's budget

Chicago aldermen have been complaining for weeks about the dangerous precedent Mayor Rahm Emanuel is setting by assuming more financial responsibility for the CTA and Chicago Public Schools and giving those agencies a "blank check" without City Council control.

On Wednesday, they moved to do something about it.

Aldermen Brendan Reilly and Scott Waguespack introduced a pair of budget amendments aimed at stripping that support from the mayor's 2018 budget.

Emanuel wants to raise ride-hailing fees by 15 cents a ride next year and by another nickel in 2019 and ship the $16 million and $21 million in annual revenues during those years to the CTA to bankroll $180 million in capital improvements.

And he wants to send $80 million to the Chicago Public Schools to pay for security, Safe Passage and after-school programs, with $66 million of that money coming from a tax-increment financing surplus. The remaining $14 million would come from the corporate fund that amounts to the city's operating checkbook.

The budget amendments introduced at Wednesday's City Council meeting would strike from the budget language empowering the mayor to enter into intergovernmental agreements with those agencies needed to execute the fund transfers.

Waguespack said what the aldermen really want is "oversight and some type of input into how the money at both CPS and CTA would be spent."

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