State Capital Plan (was: Doomsday II)

[trainman8119]

I saw a blurb in the Sun Times today that Mssrs. Quinn and Rodriguez were up for a photo op today with regard to the CTA being given $300 million in State Capital funds. No mention of Pace or Metra (not that Metra would be able to get a paper clip now). The question I have is back in March or so, the RTA was crying poor on behalf of all the service boards (of course before the Metra fiasco) and stated that without Capital money by the start of May, we were staring down "Doomsday II". The State never coughed up the money (at least until now) and the meltdown never happened. So if things were so bad, why was there not another budget/service meltdown ? Does this imply that we shouldn't ever believe anything these characters tell us, since they don't follow through ? Why is the State giving all the $$ to CTA, yet apparently, none to Pace (we'll assume that it'll be a long long time before Metra gets anything)?

UPDATE: The Tribune states that the amount is $500 million and that Metra and Pace do get some in the distribution.

[Busjack]

Based on what you posted, several things have to be sorted out:

• In 2009, there was the mini-capital bill and the five year capital bill, both of which made direct appropriations to CTA, Pace and Metra, bypassing the RTA. Both needed to be bonded out. Neither had been for a long time. The CTA Tattler picked up a Crain's post a few weeks ago that a bit of the roads and schools part had been bonded, but that no transit money was released. Maybe some of that now has. However, that is entirely capital, and, in Metra's case, primarily to pay for new Electric District Highliners.
• Doomsday was essentially caused by the fact that the RTA taxes (sales tax and real estate transfer tax in Chicago) were not generating as projected, because of the recession. None of that has changed.
• As a result of that deficit, the CTA proposed service cuts and fare increases. Quinn engineered some sort of deal that the RTA would borrow $166 million so that there wouldn't be fare hikes. There is no indication how the RTA is supposed to pay that back.
• Also, as a result of the State not paying its matches to the RTA, or apparently to much anyone else, the RTA requested authority to borrow more in anticipation of that reimbursement, should it ever come. That was the May deadline.

Hence, in asking if this is Doomsday II, the money is solely capital, at least at the moment. I mentioned what any for Metra would purchase. In the CTA case, there is the circular argument that New Flyer said that the CTA deferred the order only until it got state capital money, the money may or may not show up, but CTA no longer needs the buses as part of its capital replacement program, because, due to the service cuts, it retired the Flxs. However, as I read the 2010 CTA budget, CTA's view is that it doesn't need the buses, and either wants that bond money diverted to operating or has other uses for it.

Update: Based on your update, I checked out the Tribune link and it appears like I said. Obviously, though, the purpose was to get Quinn a photo op, after sitting on this for about 15 months, and he's commenting about protesters making a political statement?

[Busjack]

The Pace press release indicates how it intends to spend its cut of the money. Apparently, they got $32M out of the $200M appropriated out of both bills, and the $14M for city paratransit is a fraction of the $40M originally appropriated

Again, they have to thank Quinn. However, I don't think he showed up for [hypothetically speaking] a Pace event at the Chicago Heights Terminal.

[Busjack]

Another Miss RedEye has the list of what the CTA and Metra projects are. The Press Release to which she refers is here (and links within it).

The 80 ME cars contemplated by the mini capital bill would themselves be $320 million, so $157M to Metra, including some station improvements, shows how little has been released so far.

Note, also, that in the statewide report (other than grants to RTA service boards), some of the state money goes to matching ARRA grants, including the TIGGER one. So, apparently, unlike the original stimulus grants, these did require a state match.

Update: It is the CTA press release that says what Metra's allocation is, which seems about enough for 40 of the 160 Highliners.

[Busjack]

The Illinois Appellate Court, 1st District, upheld Rocky Wirtz's claim that the Illinois Jobs Now law, described above, was unconstitutional. Opinion.

If you remember, Quinn made a big deal announcing disbursing some bond money in 2010, but it was 1/2 of the 2009 allotment, and only 1/4 of the total plan.

Of course, like the Emanuel ruling, a prompt appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court is promised. On the other hand, while recipients may have received their 25%, don't expect any further disbursements soon.

I made a similar post on the CTA Tattler, where my other posts have raised quite a ruckus.

Update: After reading the opinion, a number of bills relating to the capital plan got struck down because one of the laws did not conform to the single subject requirement. While the court seemed, to me, to be a bit picky in saying that the bill could only deal with revenue, instead of capital, apparently something about changing weight limits on trucks was the straw that broke the camel's back.

However, the opinion does not list PA 96-4, which was the 2009 Capital Act, about half of which was disbursed. So, theoretically what the transit agencies said was funded at the top of the thread isn't affected.

[Busjack]

Another fun offshoot of the Illinois Jump Start bill: Besides being funded by liquor taxes, the bill authorized Internet Lottery, which the Tribune says enabled a Lottery App. So, addicts who can't get enough out of Angry Birds can now support buying a Pace bus, Metra railcar, or more asphalt.

BTW, I see that this thread was missing the post that the Illinois Supreme Court eventually upheld the bill.

[Busjack]

After reflection, I thought this was too far from the 7900s, so moved it here, since it is more Doomsday that anything else:

​ Wait a minute, you approve of Gov. Rauner? Then you must not care about transit because he is anti transit. I don't expect to see him riding a #147. Buying artics at least will help provide service and ease the overcrowding on the CTA. Better to have less frequent service than no service. Have you seen the traffic on Thurs-Sat? The city is slowly gridlocking due to poor planning and expansion of roads and transit. We are essentially on the cusp of putting more people into their cars with this potential service cut. We may not have a storage issue if 100's of buses get cut.

Rapid transit is really the golden goose of transit around here, but they are basically to the point where it can't be expanded any further. With BRT on a long development schedule it just adds fuel to the fire.

​No, it is that I don't try to pin blame on someone just coming in, when it is clear, for instance from the editorials on the pension decision that governors and general assemblies have messed over this state for 40 years.Nobody says where Quinn would have got the money, other than he would have raised income taxes. Quinn said he was put in the governor's office to fix the pension mess, but he exercised an unconstitutional veto on legislators' salaries to pass a bill that was unconstitutional.

On transit, no I don't think a tax increase to say a 7% income tax is justified to try to save the mismanaged transit mess around here. If Quinn were so interested in transit and reform, why did any mention of the Fitzgerald Task Force report die when Emanuel said it was by a bunch of propeller heads?

With regard to the 147 line, Emanuel claimed he rode the Brown Line until the stuff about his motorcade running red lights came out.

As for the artics, you haven't rebutted what I said above (in the 7900s thread).

[ArcherRider]

After reflection, I thought this was too far from the 7900s, so moved it here, since it is more Doomsday that anything else:

​No, it is that I don't try to pin blame on someone just coming in, when it is clear, for instance from the editorials on the pension decision that governors and general assemblies have messed over this state for 40 years.Nobody says where Quinn would have got the money, other than he would have raised income taxes. Quinn said he was put in the governor's office to fix the pension mess, but he exercised an unconstitutional veto on legislators' salaries to pass a bill that was unconstitutional.

On transit, no I don't think a tax increase to say a 7% income tax is justified to try to save the mismanaged transit mess around here. If Quinn were so interested in transit and reform, why did any mention of the Fitzgerald Task Force report die when Emanuel said it was by a bunch of propeller heads?

With regard to the 147 line, Emanuel claimed he rode the Brown Line until the stuff about his motorcade running red lights came out.

As for the artics, you haven't rebutted what I said above (in the 7900s thread).

​I will not support a tax increase for CTA because the company is mismanaged and why next election  I will not go to vote because of propeller head in state government.

Edited May 11, 2015 by ArcherRider

[Busjack]

​I will not support a tax increase for CTA because the company is mismanaged and why next election  I will not go to vote because of propeller head in state government.

​You might have missed that "propeller heads" was the epithet used by Emanuel to reject a transit reform task force.

[Busjack]

​Last time they had a crisis, I believe they tried to force the 30 year guys to retire. Don't know what that accomplished unless they were not the eligible age to collect their pensions. CTA has recently dropped the starting pay of bus operators, so most hired before that have that perk. I don't know about operators taking a pay cut, if it did happen then the unions weak. The pay scale for operators seems kind of high especially when you factor in years of service. I know some people in upper level management whose starting pay is just a few dollars more than that. Now why would an operator make what an upper level management person makes? There no incentive to advance yourself in the company.

Most likely what will happen is the part time operator again will be laid off, but last time they were calling them back a year later. I thought legally they only have to call them back by 6 months. They could save money just cutting their ties with them or rehiring them at starting pay. That's dirty, but it stretches the payroll.

​The whole theory behind both moves  is that you get rid of people making $32,25/hour and replace them with people making $16.30/hour (according to the salary spreadsheet). People with seniority are getting the $32.00/hour and probably all the voluntary overtime, so you figure that the pension plan (which supposedly got a legislative fix in 2008) can handle it. Undoubtedly benefits decrease in proportion. The payroll budget takes a favorable variance if you have mostly Brittney Haywoods at the controls.

I think you also forgot that the whole point of the arbitrator's decision of 2010 was that those on the full time list were laid off while those on the PTO list were not, and the arbitrator upheld that.

 

And maybe you guys can restrict the 7900s thread to when 8100 shows up.