City of Chicago & CTA

[Busjack]

I think Rahm has to do more than simply focus on non-Hispanic areas because before the February 24th election rounds I've been seeing a lot of Chuy signs up in my part of town, and I'm living in a part of the north side that's not necessarily looked upon as a Latino voting bloc stronghold. ....

It depends whether you live in the 49th, which is, or the 50th, which isn't.

Some of the radio analysis has been that while Emanuel got over 50% in the 42nd through 48th, the total vote was down. Does that indicate that people stayed home because it was cold, because they didn't think the race would matter, or because they wanted to stick it to Emanuel? No way to tell.

The other bit of radio analysis today is that while Emanuel has the commercial, the responses are like this:

What about school closings? I brought full day kindergarten.

What about it being too dangerous to walk to school? I brought full day kindergarten.

In short he isn't going to engage. The voters are going to have to figure out if that's what they want.

Also, as you pointed out, the runoff changes the dynamic to that the only way to vote against Emanuel is to vote for Garcia.

[jajuan]

It depends whether you live in the 49th, which is, or the 50th, which isn't.

Some of the radio analysis has been that while Emanuel got over 50% in the 42nd through 48th, the total vote was down. Does that indicate that people stayed home because it was cold, because they didn't think the race would matter, or because they wanted to stick it to Emanuel? No way to tell.

The other bit of radio analysis today is that while Emanuel has the commercial, the responses are like this:

What about school closings? I brought full day kindergarten.

What about it being too dangerous to walk to school? I brought full day kindergarten.

In short he isn't going to engage. The voters are going to have to figure out if that's what they want.

Also, as you pointed out, the runoff changes the dynamic to that the only way to vote against Emanuel is to vote for Garcia.

I'm in the northeast edge of the 40th just to the south of the 49th actually, though I do believe my part of the current 40th ward was in fact a part of the 49th during the previous decade. But I can tell you that from what I've been hearing among my neighbors who have been discussing city politics, they have tired of the type of nonengagement you alluded to in the school example. Folks in my neighborhood from what I've picked up in discussions have tired of that game of "I'm just going to keep talking up past big pluses that occurred in a given service or area of concern under my watch as a means to deflect focus away from and hopefully overshadow my having a tendency to flat out ignore the concerns of residents when they might not agree with a different decision I'm going to make in a different corner of that area of policy."

[strictures]

I'm in the northeast edge of the 40th just to the south of the 49th actually, though I do believe my part of the current 40th ward was in fact a part of the 49th during the previous decade. But I can tell you that from what I've been hearing among my neighbors who have been discussing city politics, they have tired of the type of nonengagement you alluded to in the school example. Folks in my neighborhood from what I've picked up in discussions have tired of that game of "I'm just going to keep talking up past big pluses that occurred in a given service or area of concern under my watch as a means to deflect focus away from and hopefully overshadow my having a tendency to flat out ignore the concerns of residents when they might not agree with a different decision I'm going to make in a different corner of that area of policy."

I live just a couple of blocks from you & in the 40th & we were fed up with Daley & are terrified of Garcia, because he will be beholden to the public employee unions & especially the teacher's union.

He'll raise taxes to insane heights to pay for it & bankrupt the city.

[Busjack]

I'm in the northeast edge of the 40th just to the south of the 49th actually, though I do believe my part of the current 40th ward was in fact a part of the 49th during the previous decade....

I live just a couple of blocks from you & in the 40th ..

According to the map, that ward is pretty compact, except for the extension north of Devon near the police station. I remember there was some contention over which ward had the Target, but that's definitely in the 40th now.

Since O'Connor is the "floor leader" for Emanuel, one would think you would get good services, but maybe he relies on the thousands of voters in Rosehill Cemetery.

Where I used to live (a long time ago, and near what is now Cermak Market) is still in the 50th.

[jajuan]

I live just a couple of blocks from you & in the 40th & we were fed up with Daley & are terrified of Garcia, because he will be beholden to the public employee unions & especially the teacher's union.

He'll raise taxes to insane heights to pay for it & bankrupt the city.

You're a less vocal part of the community than the folks based off what I'm hearing and observing then because I've seen a lot of Garcia signs out for the past few weeks and almost everybody I've heard talking are tired of Emanuel. I definitely have not heard these high tax horror stories you're speaking of. About the only person I heard use that line was our idiot new governor who gave that line to the media about a week ago when ABC7 Eyewitness News reported that he said the city was on a road to bankruptcy and used that hyperbolic statement to going to into this mumble mouth attack of the unions, make a case that the city can't pay its pension obligations yet conveniently neglected to mention that not getting the state's pension crisis as a whole under control will be a huge contributor to that particular problem, and say that those factors are something Chicago voters should considered going into the runoff elections next month while saying he's politically neutral in the mayoral campaign and endorses neither Emanuel nor Garcia even though it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that he would prefer not to have a Mayor Garcia in place of the current Mayor Emanuel.

[jajuan]

According to the map, that ward is pretty compact, except for the extension north of Devon near the police station. I remember there was some contention over which ward had the Target, but that's definitely in the 40th now.

Since O'Connor is the "floor leader" for Emanuel, one would think you would get good services, but maybe he relies on the thousands of voters in Rosehill Cemetery.

Where I used to live (a long time ago, and near what is now Cermak Market) is still in the 50th.

You hit on sort of a political irony. Almost everyone in the area likes or at minimum is satisfied with O'Connor as our alderman as evidenced by his easily winning reelection to go into his 33rd year as alderman of the ward, but when it comes to mayor there is an apparent clear divide between keeping Emanuel or dumping him. Plus I think the shooting near our northern border with the 49th that the 49th ward alderman was himself a witness to along with other shootings probably contributes to that in some way since local crime across the city has indeed been an issue to varying degrees in the campaign.

[Busjack]

...I definitely have not heard these high tax horror stories you're speaking of. ....

The big story this week was Carrie Austin (supposedly the budget leader in the council) blurting out that whoever wins, property taxes are going up. Only after then did Emanuel trot out the "Chuy doesn't say how he is going to pay for it" ad.

....About the only person I heard use that line was our idiot new governor who gave that line to the media about a week ago when ABC7 Eyewitness News reported that he said the city was on a road to bankruptcy and used that hyperbolic statement to going to into this mumble mouth attack of the unions, make a case that the city can't pay its pension obligations yet conveniently neglected to mention that not getting the state's pension crisis as a whole under control will be a huge contributor to that particular problem...

That's a pretty big misrepresentation of the problem.

This Tribune story is a pretty balanced view of what happened in the Illinois Supreme Court. Now, I could have come up with an argument that a contractual obligation meant what it means in the private sector--what you already earned is vested, but (as Rauner suggests), what you have in the future is not, and the employer can reduce future accruals, stick you on a 401K, or terminate the plan and shove the obligation on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

However, it seems like the dear Attorney General took the position that the contractual guaranty meant the whatever the terms were on the first day of your hire can't be changed, but somehow an emergency overcomes the constitution. The circuit court judge rejected that out of hand, and said that the state couldn't even put on evidence of an emergency. I read the circuit court opinion, and personally I think that the Attorney General is trapped. The only way out seems to be for the Supreme Court to redefine "contractual obligation."

The only time I remember a constitution supposedly being limited by an emergency was when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, even though the U.S. Constitution said that may not be done.

Not that I have much use for Eric Zorn (especially on legal issues), but his Lizzie Borden column seems on point.

The other fly in the ointment is that, unlike in the private sector, where there isn't a vested right to medical benefits on retirement, the Illinois Supreme Court somehow twisted imposing a premium for medical benefits into impairing the right to free medical care, in violation of the Pension Clause. That's why the Police and Fire unions are now suing, and basically Emanuel can't do anything until that is resolved.

All Rauner has said about this is that he'll wait for the Illinois Supreme Court opinion to decide how to proceed. Also, he is correct in the sense that the Michigan pension clause became worthless once Detroit was in bankruptcy court, and while that option may be open to a city under Chapter 9, it is not for the state.

In any event, any reform would be up to the Legislature, but it looks like Quinn coerced Madigan and Cullerton into an unconstitutional bill, like most things passed by the legislature.

Finally, the CTA pension law shows one way they could have constitutionally have done it--tell everyone in the current plan that their contributions go up to say, 25% of pay, but if you don't like that, you can elect to go into the 8% contribution plan.

[jajuan]

The big story this week was Carrie Austin (supposedly the budget leader in the council) blurting out that whoever wins, property taxes are going up. Only after then did Emanuel trot out the "Chuy doesn't say how he is going to pay for it" ad.

That's a pretty big misrepresentation of the problem.

This Tribune story is a pretty balanced view of what happened in the Illinois Supreme Court. Now, I could have come up with an argument that a contractual obligation meant what it means in the private sector--what you already earned is vested, but (as Rauner suggests), what you have in the future is not, and the employer can reduce future accruals, stick you on a 401K, or terminate the plan and shove the obligation on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

However, it seems like the dear Attorney General took the position that the contractual guaranty meant the whatever the terms were on the first day of your hire can't be changed, but somehow an emergency overcomes the constitution. The circuit court judge rejected that out of hand, and said that the state couldn't even put on evidence of an emergency. I read the circuit court opinion, and personally I think that the Attorney General is trapped. The only way out seems to be for the Supreme Court to redefine "contractual obligation."

The only time I remember a constitution supposedly being limited by an emergency was when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, even though the U.S. Constitution said that may not be done.

Not that I have much use for Eric Zorn (especially on legal issues), but his Lizzie Borden column seems on point.

The other fly in the ointment is that, unlike in the private sector, where there isn't a vested right to medical benefits on retirement, the Illinois Supreme Court somehow twisted imposing a premium for medical benefits into impairing the right to free medical care, in violation of the Pension Clause. That's why the Police and Fire unions are now suing, and basically Emanuel can't do anything until that is resolved.

All Rauner has said about this is that he'll wait for the Illinois Supreme Court opinion to decide how to proceed. Also, he is correct in the sense that the Michigan pension clause became worthless once Detroit was in bankruptcy court, and while that option may be open to a city under Chapter 9, it is not for the state.

In any event, any reform would be up to the Legislature, but it looks like Quinn coerced Madigan and Cullerton into an unconstitutional bill, like most things passed by the legislature.

Finally, the CTA pension law shows one way they could have constitutionally have done it--tell everyone in the current plan that their contributions go up to say, 25% of pay, but if you don't like that, you can elect to go into the 8% contribution plan.

Yeah a lot of this is self inflicted obviously from both sides of the political spectrum because this is a decades old problem. And while Rauner may have said he will wait for the Court to make a decision on the pension, there still was a "it's mostly the unions fault" tint to his words in his recent reported foray into hyperbole regarding the city and bankruptcy. And I still question his supposed concern of the city being on a "path to bankruptcy" when he's proposing giving the city the financial shaft in his proposed budget cuts despite his saying he'd direct money to schools.

[Busjack]

Yeah a lot of this is self inflicted obviously from both sides of the political spectrum because this is a decades old problem. And while Rauner may have said he will wait for the Court to make a decision on the pension, there still was a "it's mostly the unions fault" tint to his words in his recent reported foray into hyperbole regarding the city and bankruptcy. And I still question his supposed concern of the city being on a "path to bankruptcy" when he's proposing giving the city the financial shaft in his proposed budget cuts despite his saying he'd direct money to schools.

I'll agree with that going after the unions was not the strongest place to start, especially on the state side when the AG told the Comptroller to pay the compulsory fees to the unions, and then insisted that Rauner didn't have the authority to sue the unions in federal court. Aside from the point that Lisa has court authority that only she can represent the state (apparently Quinn didn't figure that out, either, when he tried to compromise the Lottery contract suit), I don't see how Rauner has standing (as opposed to those getting grants from the state to care for their own relatives who were told to pay union dues, when they weren't even employees), since his rights are not personally affected. Rauner's reliance on that theory is also questionable.

While union members have their First Amendment rights,including to organize and vote, I agree with strictures' point that a candidate like Garcia, who is there only because of the CTU, is put into a position of a conflict of interest.

As far as the financial shaft, if there isn't enough money to go around, someone has to take the haircut.

To get it back closer to this topic, the Tribune article* on Claypool complaining at the CT Board meeting that the subsidy cuts were worse than first thought, quotes Claypool: "We are working with Metra, we are working with Pace, we are working with the RTA..." indicates that the mendicants can work together, but not to get the inefficiencies out of the system, as shown by the Auditor General and Fitzgerald Task Force reports. That indicates to me that something is wrong. Claypool claims that he has avoided doomsday at the moment, but as the article points out, wait until after the election.**

__________

*This was on the home page, but strangely supplanted by older items. Thank you Google.

**Mike Payne predicts that Emanuel will lose, so maybe Claypool won't be there much longer, even if he sticks with his stance on the Fitzgerald report.

[andrethebusman]

As I understand it, the unions have taken the position that not only does the clause about pensions mean that you can't change anything regarding current employee pensions, but that you can't change anything at all as long as the constitution has not been amended to remove that clause. If the supreme court agrees, then the only way out would be to never hire another state employee again and go to a 100% contracted out work force as attrition clears out the current ones. That might take 30 years or more, but eventually it would accomplish the goal of getting the pension monkey off the state's back. Right now, we seem to be in a situation where the pensions will eventually take all of the state's revenues and nobody else will get anything, possibly eventually even the then-current employee's paychecks. Regardless of how this mess got this way, this is now like if your house is on fire. Don't worry about how the fire started, call the fire department to put it out. Figure out the causes and the blame later.

[i8itall4u]

I wish Metra had bought all the coaches that LA Metrolink got rid of due their incessant grade crossing crashes, due to the bizarre fact that LA area drivers simply don't understand they should stop when the lights flash & the gates come down.

Those coaches would have been perfect for the UP North Line which has the lowest amount of freight interference & the fewest grade crossings, other than the Metra Electric which has no grade crossings or freight interference.

That would have given Metra maybe 100 extra, fairly recent coaches, even though those double deckers are very different than the bilevel gallery cars used here for 60 years.

...MED South Chicago branch is all at grade.

[strictures]

You're a less vocal part of the community than the folks based off what I'm hearing and observing then because I've seen a lot of Garcia signs out for the past few weeks and almost everybody I've heard talking are tired of Emanuel. I definitely have not heard these high tax horror stories you're speaking of. About the only person I heard use that line was our idiot new governor who gave that line to the media about a week ago when ABC7 Eyewitness News reported that he said the city was on a road to bankruptcy and used that hyperbolic statement to going to into this mumble mouth attack of the unions, make a case that the city can't pay its pension obligations yet conveniently neglected to mention that not getting the state's pension crisis as a whole under control will be a huge contributor to that particular problem, and say that those factors are something Chicago voters should considered going into the runoff elections next month while saying he's politically neutral in the mayoral campaign and endorses neither Emanuel nor Garcia even though it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that he would prefer not to have a Mayor Garcia in place of the current Mayor Emanuel.

If you read this commentary by Garcia http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-chuy-garcia-budget-perspec-0312-20150312-story.html#navtype=outfit but it's paywalled.

It's just a boring & repetitive attack on Emanuel & Garcia's patented Glittering Generalities about what he'll do to fix the city's finances. Meaning, he hasn't a clue what to do, as all he wants are audits of everything, as that's going to do anything, except enrich the auditors he hires, who are undoubtedly contributors to his campaign.

[Busjack]

As I understand it, the unions have taken the position that not only does the clause about pensions mean that you can't change anything regarding current employee pensions, but that you can't change anything at all as long as the constitution has not been amended to remove that clause. If the supreme court agrees, then the only way out would be to never hire another state employee again and go to a 100% contracted out work force as attrition clears out the current ones. That might take 30 years or more, but eventually it would accomplish the goal of getting the pension monkey off the state's back. Right now, we seem to be in a situation where the pensions will eventually take all of the state's revenues and nobody else will get anything, possibly eventually even the then-current employee's paychecks. Regardless of how this mess got this way, this is now like if your house is on fire. Don't worry about how the fire started, call the fire department to put it out. Figure out the causes and the blame later.

Even repealing that clause wouldn't completely cure the problem, because there still is the federal impairment of contracts clause.

The state could fire everyone and if they came back make them new workers, except that public employee union contracts probably throw a wrench into that cog. Civil service might, too.

I still like the "raise their contributions" idea, but the legislature is not going to do that.

[Busjack]

If you read this commentary by Garcia http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-chuy-garcia-budget-perspec-0312-20150312-story.html#navtype=outfit but it's paywalled.

It's just a boring & repetitive attack on Emanuel & Garcia's patented Glittering Generalities about what he'll do to fix the city's finances. Meaning, he hasn't a clue what to do, as all he wants are audits of everything, as that's going to do anything, except enrich the auditors he hires, who are undoubtedly contributors to his campaign.

That is prefaced by his "On Friday I will release my plan to restore fiscal sanity to our city," so I guess we'll have to wait to find out.

However, there seem to be 2 inaccuracies in his history:

• The city pension mess goes back about 10 years to the Daley administration. The state passed a law saying the city had to get current on its pension obligations, and Daley essentially said "how are we going to do that?" and didn't. The balloon payment is now coming due. Garcia, though is claiming that Emanuel made it worse.
• Cook County did get things under control enough to repeal the 1% Stroger sales tax increase, but a lot of that was tapping into Obamacare for the county hospital system, and Preckwinkle has said that she'll need a sales tax increase if they don't fix the pension mess.

One also wonders that while he talks about better budgeting, he also talks about $500,000 earners and new revenue sources. Fioretti's commuter tax might be popular, but besides whether the city has the authority to impose it, that would certainly send headquarters back to Deerfield and Schaumburg.

But, as I indicated above, we'll have to wait until tonight.

[Guest]

I live just a couple of blocks from you & in the 40th & we were fed up with Daley & are terrified of Garcia, because he will be beholden to the public employee unions & especially the teacher's union.

He'll raise taxes to insane heights to pay for it & bankrupt the city.

Well unfortunately were no better off with dictator Rahm! Id rather take a chance on Garcia. A mayor who willfully stoops so low such as fixing traffic lights to steal money out of the pockets from the citizens if this city and then wont give it back to me is a dishonest scumbag! Ill take a chance on Jesus Garcia!

[strictures]

Well unfortunately were no better off with dictator Rahm! Id rather take a chance on Garcia. A mayor who willfully stoops so low such as fixing traffic lights to steal money out of the pockets from the citizens if this city and then wont give it back to me is a dishonest scumbag! Ill take a chance on Jesus Garcia!

You still want to take a chance on this unprepared clown after today's press conference? His so-called budget solution didn't have a single way to raise money & he proposed to "immediately organize a working committee . . . to examine the full range of existing and potential revenue options that are available to the city."

So it took him four months to say he'll have a committee meeting?

Then his vaunted financial advisor spoke "about how the city's pension funds could save $50 million a year if they negotiated fees jointly with investment companies. He said afterward he was "not aware" that City Treasurer Kurt Summers, who was appointed to the job last year by Emanuel, recently moved to do just that."

Just more of his patented Glittering Generalities.

All quotes from Greg Hinz's column at Crain's http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150313/BLOGS02/150319891/garcias-financial-plan-lots-of-overview-no-detail. It's paywalled, but go to private or incognito browsing & you can read it.

[Busjack]

...

All quotes from Greg Hinz's column at Crain's http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150313/BLOGS02/150319891/garcias-financial-plan-lots-of-overview-no-detail. It's paywalled, but go to private or incognito browsing & you can read it.

Most of the TV and radio stories were to the same effect, so I guess people don't have to worry about the paywall.

Of course, the TV and radio also have Emanuel saying that property taxes will go up if the city doesn't get relief (essentially confirming Austin's statement).

So much for my statement about wait until later Friday.

[jajuan]

I'll agree with that going after the unions was not the strongest place to start, especially on the state side when the AG told the Comptroller to pay the compulsory fees to the unions, and then insisted that Rauner didn't have the authority to sue the unions in federal court. Aside from the point that Lisa has court authority that only she can represent the state (apparently Quinn didn't figure that out, either, when he tried to compromise the Lottery contract suit), I don't see how Rauner has standing (as opposed to those getting grants from the state to care for their own relatives who were told to pay union dues, when they weren't even employees), since his rights are not personally affected. Rauner's reliance on that theory is also questionable.

While union members have their First Amendment rights,including to organize and vote, I agree with strictures' point that a candidate like Garcia, who is there only because of the CTU, is put into a position of a conflict of interest.

As far as the financial shaft, if there isn't enough money to go around, someone has to take the haircut.

To get it back closer to this topic, the Tribune article* on Claypool complaining at the CT Board meeting that the subsidy cuts were worse than first thought, quotes Claypool: "We are working with Metra, we are working with Pace, we are working with the RTA..." indicates that the mendicants can work together, but not to get the inefficiencies out of the system, as shown by the Auditor General and Fitzgerald Task Force reports. That indicates to me that something is wrong. Claypool claims that he has avoided doomsday at the moment, but as the article points out, wait until after the election.**

__________

*This was on the home page, but strangely supplanted by older items. Thank you Google.

**Mike Payne predicts that Emanuel will lose, so maybe Claypool won't be there much longer, even if he sticks with his stance on the Fitzgerald report.

Yeah somebody has to take the haircut, and I say spread any cuts out more evenly. Don't expect to improve the financial health of the whole state on the backs and shoulders of the city alone which is essentially what the Governor is proposing.

[Busjack]

Yeah somebody has to take the haircut, and I say spread any cuts out more evenly. Don't expect to improve the financial health of the whole state on the backs and shoulders of the city alone which is essentially what the Governor is proposing.

A lot of the outlying areas are complaining, too.

Apparently, most of the state school funding goes to the city, and there isn't a proposal to cut that. Cullerton was complaining that the city pays for the teachers' retirement system until it was pointed out that its school aid was increased to cover that. Apparently all the the northern suburbs get in state school aid is for special needs students. Again to get it to this topic, if CTA sucks more transit aid than the other providers, an across the board cut to the RTA is going to hit it harder.

[jajuan]

A lot of the outlying areas are complaining, too.

Apparently, most of the state school funding goes to the city, and there isn't a proposal to cut that. Cullerton was complaining that the city pays for the teachers' retirement system until it was pointed out that its school aid was increased to cover that. Apparently all the the northern suburbs get in state school aid is for special needs students. Again to get it to this topic, if CTA sucks more transit aid than the other providers, an across the board cut to the RTA is going to hit it harder.

Well ABC7 Eyewitness News showed RTA warning that the Governor's proposed transit cut would translate to a cut for CTA the size of a third of its revenue that's from the farebox. I know it likes to get said the transit boards cry broke too much, bu how the hell does CTA absorb a cut like that without making draconian cuts in service when service is already bare bones compared to ten years ago? And he's still painting this as being because of the unions which is one broken record he needs to stop using when both political parties are at fault from decades of questionable moves that have little or nothing to do with unions for whatever messes the state's finances are in. So that means stop sounded like a generic Republican in these proposals when the campaign promise implied not being a generic Republican in running the state. I'm just not seeing any commonsense spreading the hurt. What good is saving schools, if nobody can get to school because their bus and train might be cut?

[Busjack]

Well ABC7 Eyewitness News showed RTA warning that the Governor's proposed transit cut would translate to a cut for CTA the size of a third of its revenue that's from the farebox. I know it likes to get said the transit boards cry broke too much, bu how the hell does CTA absorb a cut like that without making draconian cuts in service when service is already bare bones compared to ten years ago? And he's still painting this as being because of the unions which is one broken record he needs to stop using when both political parties are at fault from decades of questionable moves that have little or nothing to do with unions for whatever messes the state's finances are in. So that means stop sounded like a generic Republican in these proposals when the campaign promise implied not being a generic Republican in running the state. I'm just not seeing any commonsense spreading the hurt. What good is saving schools, if nobody can get to school because their bus and train might be cut?

As I noted above, the mendicants suddenly recognize each other when suddenly their aid might be cut. As Rauner's spokesperson pointed out, reform is certainly in order, and I pointed out that maybe the Fitzgerald Task Force should not be considered as dead on arrival as Emanuel categorized it. Or maybe Rauner read the "more bus moves" thread.

I saw a lot of number fudging in that article, like that the cut was equivalent to so many L boardings.

Let's also remember that when we went through the 2006-7 Doomsday, the extent of necessary cuts (such as running a 7 day Sunday schedule) claimed was bogus, and when cuts were really necessary in 2010, they were to a lesser extent.

To get it back to the topic here, apparently neither Emanuel nor Garcia has any answer to the fact that the fiscal clock has run out.

And as far as "the unions have nothing to do with this," how is it that a teachers' union lobbyist got a pension, and then has the nerve to sue when it is cut, claiming rights under the Pension Clause? Isn't even fraud a defense to a contract? Maybe Lisa can figure that out.

And maybe someone should walk to school. School runs, being profitable, usually aren't cut by the transit authorities around here, anyway.

[BusHunter]

I googled some past budgets to see what CTA does when they have a $100 million dollar deficit. There's everything from doomsday budgets of 2007 to no cuts at all, although that may have been when alot of point supervisors were cut or cuts in administration. There's no doubt going to be a fare increase but I don't really know what they can cut for service. There's not much left to cut.

[Guest]

Another transit doomsday is looming no matter who wins the mayoral race.

[NewFlyerMCI]

Anymore speculation as to why Rauner is focused on Chicago specifically? And out of all things why transit? Has there been any protesting yet?

[Busjack]

Anymore speculation as to why Rauner is focused on Chicago specifically? And out of all things why transit? Has there been any protesting yet?

Only the paranoids in Chicago say he is focused on Chicago. The Daily Herald says he's screwing the northwest suburbs. Probably he is equal opportunity.

However when you continue to have CTA using the bogus statistic that they provide 81% of the rides in the RTA area, of course they will be complaining more.