Expenses belie austerity pledge

Through all the struggles governmental bodies have had in the last couple years to make ends meet, we have consistently urged officials to look inward before increasing taxes or cutting essential services.

Have they cut all the fat out of the budget? Have they instituted responsible austerity measures to make sure any tax increase or service cut is indeed a last resort?

Daily Herald transportation writer Marni Pyke wondered about those questions too. So she decided to check out what the Regional Transportation Agency and Pace, the suburban bus agency, were expensing this year. What she found is disturbing.

The RTA - which has financial authority over Pace, the CTA and Metra - is predicting tough financial times for the future. Pace is looking to cut or reduce 50 bus routes and separately considering increasing fares for paratransit, which provides rides for people with disabilities.

Yet both agencies are spending money they clearly don't have to and shouldn't. While some of it may not amount to a lot, it makes us wonder - and should make you wonder - whether they have cut back as much as they should have. And it makes us wonder aloud which other governmental bodies and agencies could use a good look at expenses.

"When you see excess expenditures, it raises skepticism about how these government agencies are operating," Terry Pastika, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, told Pyke in Sunday's Daily Herald. "Do you have to stay at the Hilton? Do you have to send eight people to Los Angeles?"

If you ask the RTA and Pace, the answers are yes. They sent eight people to Los Angeles in March to study bus rapid transit.

"We do not have bus rapid transit in the region. Anytime you are trying to introduce a mode of transportation, you had better know what you're buying and those making the decisions should what they're talking about."

Perhaps. But if you sent half of those people, could they not bring information back for the rest?

RTA Executive Director Steve Schlickman says they are on an austerity budget. He says they cut travel and business expenses to $139,000 this year from $184,000. But they often stay at hotels with rates higher than $200 a night. And in a year when so many extras are cut by businesses, they still paid a $176.50 invoice for chaperones and kids to visit the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) as part of Take your Kids to Work Day. Unless RTA workers spend their day working at the Skydeck (which, of course, would raise all sorts of other questions), that's an unnecessary expense. Pyke found plenty of other examples.

And, Pastika said, it's ironic that the RTA and Pace are paying expenses for taxis and cars when they should be encouraging their employees to use mass transit just as they would like the rest of us doing.

We expect and demand more financial discipline from these agencies.