Daily Herald opinion: The transit failure: If crisis is to be averted this summer, lawmakers will need something better than ‘spitballing’

There is plenty in the newly approved Illinois budget to wring one’s hands over, but for the suburbs specifically, perhaps the bullet most fortunately dodged — and simultaneously the opportunity most unfortunately lost — was the proposed solution to the pending financial crisis facing the region’s public transportation agencies.

True to form in Illinois politics, Democratic Party leaders who have been studying the $770 million-plus disaster ahead — the so-called “fiscal cliff” — waited until literally the last possible legislative moment to act, and then unveiled a proposal that was so transformative, tax intensive and Chicago-centric that its improbably hopes for support from the suburbs and downstate, even from Democrats, made it virtually dead on arrival.

True, any proposal that had a chance of practical success would have to be transformative, in the sense that the financial and organizational challenges facing Metra, the Chicago Transportation Authority, Pace bus and the umbrella Regional Transportation Authority are such that they require a comprehensive systemic vision. Dumping any such proposal on lawmakers with barely minutes to review and debate it is not just strategically inadequate, it also exacerbates suspicions that political power and not broad-based consensus is an idea’s driving force.

So, it’s hardly surprising — not to mention gratifying — that suburban interests balked from the outset at the proposal’s organizational centerpiece — a management structure that gave the governor, Chicago mayor and Cook County Board president five board appointments each with DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties getting just a total of five appointments among them.

“The governance (design) diluted representation from the Collars to the point where the Collar Counties did not have to be included in any decisions. Why would we give (Chicago Mayor) Brandon Johnson $1.5 billion to bail out CTA and not be able to influence how that money is spent?” Bartlett Republican Sen. Lewis told our Marni Pyke.

Why indeed. And, the revenue ideas were little better, though they might not have been so readily and roundly rejected if lawmakers had been given more time to evaluate and understand them — and even to offer some modifications or other ideas of their own. Planners came up with a 50-cents-per-toll addon for tollway commuters, a $1.50 fee for retail and food deliveries statewide and extending Chicago’s real estate transfer tax and 10% fee on rideshares to other Cook County suburbs and the Collar Counties. Any viable solution was sure to require some revenue production, but the ideas produced here seemed preordained for rejection.

Or, as Hoffman Estates Democratic state Rep. Fred Crespo said, “It seems like they were spitballing — throwing things on the wall to see what would stick.”

For anyone other than the most loyal machine partisans, not much did. That is an important and valuable lesson for political leaders if they truly want to head off what are sure to be draconian cuts in service and increases in costs for bus and train commuters if no solution is found soon.

Speaking of lessons, political leaders need only look to the impact of a previous crisis to see the challenge hasty, deal-oriented decision making can have on the future. Facing a similar financial crisis 17 years ago, leaders won Collar Counties’ support by letting them use RTA tax money for public safety and road work rather than the public transportation system. On Saturday, when they proposed, reasonably, that transit money be used for transit purposes, they faced predictable opposition that only made building consensus all the more difficult.

The organization leaders put in place now will be the foundation for public transportation in our region for years to come, and its growth will need to be sustainable, encouraged and developed beyond the Chicago city limits or even the contours of Cook County. That the best they could come up with following nearly a year of warnings, suggestions and examination were “things on the wall,” shoved into the hands of lawmakers who, especially in the House, had little opportunity for study or input, does not offer great confidence that they will manage revisions this summer that could stave off the crisis and set up the system for growth and prosperity in the years ahead.

As politically untenable as all this proved to be, it is probably also true that with modifications, more time available to understand its implications and a more inclusive approach to what Lewis called “governance,” the plan has structural components that could form the framework of a solution. A revisioned organizational leadership model, supported by a combination of creative revenue enhancements and spending cuts is certainly the right place to start.

But if, as St. Charles Republican Sen. Donald DeWitte predicted, lawmakers are to be called back this summer to take another run at this crisis, they’re going to need to have a better understanding of the financial commitments being asked of them, more certainty that spending will be managed efficiently and a leadership structure that better respects their interests, if they’re going to get the job done.