Other than a handful of state employees,
highway workers, Medicaid vendors, commercial-truck owners, and
poor people, few out there in Voter Land have really paid much
attention to the state’s budget problems.
Sure, they know that the troubles exist, but
only on an abstract level. Most people have very few direct
contacts with state government, and those few state services
haven’t been noticeably curtailed yet. Roads are still
passable; drivers’ licenses are still up to date; most senior
citizens aren’t getting tossed out of nursing homes; schools,
though obviously struggling, are still open.
This lack of regular contact with state
government is a big reason I figured that Gov. Rod Blagojevich
could almost guarantee his reelection by keeping his pledge not to
raise state income or sales taxes. If a traffic light fails, people
blame their local government, even though state funding for a
repair hasn’t arrived as promised. If a school budget runs
into the red and forces a tax increase, they blame the school
board, even though they may know that the state may not be holding
up its end.
However, the Chicago Transit
Authority’s latest fiscal crisis is connecting millions of
people in Chicago and Cook County with the state’s budget
problems in a very real way — and residents of the
state’s most populous area are starting to take notice.
The CTA provides about 400 million total
rides a year on its vast network of trains and buses. About a third
of its riders don’t have their own cars, and, even if they do
have private transportation, few regular CTA commuters are willing
to fork over the $20 to $30 a day it costs to park downtown these
days. To top it all off, cab fares are about to go up 12 percent.
This month, the CTA threatened massive service rollbacks to deal with a $55 million
deficit and, in the process, set off a media firestorm in the metro
region. The worst cuts were the elimination of express-bus service to
areas far from the Loop, which will force thousands of commuters to
ride buses that stop every block or so for miles on end. Increasing
times between trains during rush hour will also be a problem because
the delays will most likely create jam-packed stations and
compartments. Regular riders are left to wonder how they’ll
possibly cope with the new and unwanted stressful change in their
lives.
Downstate and suburban legislators
don’t always fully appreciate the value of Chicago’s
public-transportation network. Imagine, for a moment, that it was
suddenly announced that the government could no long afford to
maintain all of the roads in your area and that some streets would
have to be closed and important main arteries would be narrowed to
just one or two lanes. Sure, you’d find a way to make the
best of the situation, but you wouldn’t be happy at all
— especially if a mouthy Chicago legislator was quoted in the
local paper saying that your town should just start charging people
to use the streets and they’d be reopened.
As always in situations such as this one, the
question everyone asks is “Who do we blame for this
mess?” Luckily for the CTA and Mayor Richard Daley, the
fickle finger of fate is pointing not at a handy local figure but
directly at Blagojevich.
It was the governor who promised to bail out
the CTA in February by charging a new statewide sales tax on
computer software. So far he’s not having a whole lot of
luck, but if he doesn’t come through with the money,
he’ll wind up wearing the CTA’s tattered jacket.
This one issue won’t make or break the
governor’s reelection chances. But it has finally provided us
with a major contact point between a large swath of the general
public and the state budget, and that means that solving the
problem has become somewhat more important than most of the other,
far more expensive budget crises. And this time the governor
won’t be able to pin the blame on someone else.
In local politics, if you promise to fix
something you’re expected to actually fix it.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2005.
