Last week, the Chicago Transit Authority announced
sweeping service cuts and fare increases unless the state could chip in $55 million in additional funding.
There was little response from the governor or legislature, except for sniping from Republicans that the CTA was making the whole thing up to put pressure on.
Text below, or see the original here.
Blame do-nothing Legislature
The Chicago Transit Authority's announced cutbacks -- emasculations is a better word -- should have awakened the Springfield crew that the time for placid, easy deals is over and hard decisions are needed. That one of the best public transit systems in the continent should degenerate to the standards of a hick town says something about the complacency, apathy and plain laziness of public officials.
The consequences to the city if the transit system is effectively dismantled are breathtaking. Businesses would lose customers. Tourism would decay. Jobs would be lost. Traffic would virtually immobilize an entire region.
The politicians have to bite the bullet and do whatever it takes to save the CTA. Yes, that may even mean the T word: taxes.
If they cannot work up the spine to do this, they should pay the highest price at election time.
I wrote this after thinking about other things I'd noticed since moving here from California. The income tax rate is only 3 percent, compared to a top rate of 9.3 in California.
You get what you pay for - government services are laughable. Call a driver's license office and the phone will simply ring, with no one to answer, not even a machine. The community college my wife attends is so poorly organized that it doesn't know, even now, what date its summer term will start.
What got me angry enough to write the letter was the seeming lack of interest in the issue by state politicians. The expressways and streets are already clogged; the city simply can't function without transit. Yet nobody seems to care. The (Democratic) governor won't abide any talk of an income tax increase, even though there's plenty of room to do it.