Illinois, home to the worst economy in the Midwest, is not exactly rolling with extra tax dollars right now. Who is at fault is unclear; who is unaware is not: Springfield.
After the debacle of a budget negotiation that saw our Governor (D) and House Leader (D) practically come to blows, we were still left with an appropriations bill laden with probably-not-so-constitutional vetoes and several lawsuits by the executive branch aimed at the legislative. All this because the former wanted to expand spending on state programs such as health care, mostly with taxes on businesses that would have been disastrous (we won’t even mention the 107-0 General Assembly vote against it…oops…)
I’m all for universal health care, but Illinois does not have the money right now. All this does is give the concept a bad name, and provide ammunition to its opponents. But that’s besides the point.
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What Illinois does have the money for, with the right tax plan Revolutionary Road release Ocean’s Eleven ipod , is to increase funding to the Regional Transportation Authority. The RTA oversees the three branches of Chicagoland public transportation: the CTA (city trains and buses,) Metra (suburban trains) and Pace (suburban buses.) User fees for the various modes of transport are reasonable as RTA receives funding from the state to make up the rest, a logical use of a certain portion of state tax dollars.
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The problem is that RTA, specifically CTA, does not have adequate funding for this fiscal year, and threatened early in 2007 that if more dollars were not allocated to its coffers in the new state budget that a “doomsday scenario” would be reached where thirty-some bus lines would be cut and fees on certain CTA trains would go up a dollar or two. Given that many of the regular patrons of mass transport are lower income earners that need the services of CTA to get to work or school, that’s a big jump in a non-optional expense.
Of course no money was found in the budget, because there really wasn’t money found for much of anything. The reasons: there’s really no more money to go around, and even if there were legislators wouldn’t have been able to agree on how to spend it anyway. Which brings us to the Governor’s announcement today that he will buy RTA time by releasing all of their state money to them at once in order to keep the lines 100% operational while Springfield looks under the cushions and the car seats. This extra $24 million up front was good enough for RTA to push their doomsday device button-pushing back from this coming weekend ’til November.
Baby Mama movie download Where legislators will find money, I’m not sure, and neither are they, which is a shame since the answer is staring them right in the face: gas taxes in Chicagoland. While RTA’s funding is really a tiny drop in the state budget ($37 million out of $51 billion, asking for a total of $110 million,) taking more money from general tax revenues is unfair to the South of I-80 Crowd (as well as the West of I-39 crowd.) So raising the tax on gas by four to five cents per gallon in Chicagoland and devoting that cash exclusively towards mass transit would raise the necessary funds only from those regularly benefit from the service. Yes, gas prices are already high, but an extra sixty cents every time you fill your fifteen gallon tank would hurt a limited number of people, and perhaps drive a few to *gasp* use mass transit when possible, which would fill an empty seat on the red line and put a few more dollars in CTA’s tank.
The Birds release Of course, this won’t happen, even if residents of Chicagoland were up in arms demanding it. Will County recently asked the legislature for permission to have the county board vote to have a referendum asking the voters if they could raise the gas tax no more than four cents. The bill passed the General Assembly, only to be vetoed by the Governor.
Excuse me? Will County can’t decide whether or not the people get to vote on whether or not they can raise more funds through a slight gas tax? I understand the Governor’s aversion towards taxes, and it’s a far superior position to one of “tax and spend.” But it’s ridiculous to keep a local government from asking its people for permission, especially when the people have to vote yes for the tax to take effect. We’re not talking about a unilateral board decision that the people have no say in. Instead, the Governor decided for all of Will County.
After this, what hope can RTA have? There are no funds just sitting around in some state CD at Regions Bank to dip into. Additional funds will have to be raised, but any logical course of action won’t be allowed. Chicagoland should enjoy their two-month reprieve, because come November it’s going to be a lot colder in the Windy City, and some people are going to do a lot more walking.