Put the tollway under the RTA.
There, I’ve said it. So go ahead. Start throwing rocks.
Tell me, if you’re a hard-driving suburban Republican, that bringing the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority under the Regional Transportation Authority is a sneaky way of diverting toll money to the always-broke Chicago Transit Authority, which the RTA oversees.
Accuse me, if you are a strap-hanging city Democrat, of wanting to expand the reach of the GOP-dominated RTA board, perhaps with an eye toward grabbing the city’s transportation jewel–O’Hare International Airport.
Charge me with any crime you like. But hear me out. Because Illinois, almost by accident, has before it a one-time chance to make some sense out of the Chicago region’s sprawling, brawling transportation mess.
Let me explain.
Until recently the toll highway authority was humming along smartly through two decades of Republican control. It had built itself a spiffy new headquarters in Downers Grove and was preparing to complete its second suburban beltway by extending I-355 through semirural central Lake and Will Counties. Environmentalists and urban planners complain the authority has become a perpetual sprawl machine, using tolls from the inner suburbs (along the Tri-State) to lay the backbone for new outer suburbs. But not many people of consequence paid these contrarians any mind. Indeed, state highway planners already were hinting at the need, eventually, for a third beltway out in Kane and McHenry Counties.
And why not? People will keep moving to the suburban fringe with or without new superhighways, the authority reasons. This way the big roads can be financed without a gas tax increase. And if a few favored Republican donors happen to buy up land around the busiest interchanges, well, some stranger would have spotted these opportunities sooner or later.
Lately, however, some sand has been thrown into the road machine. Its former executive director (Robert Hickman, a boyhood chum of Gov. Jim Edgar) got himself convicted for secretly dealing himself in on an authority land deal. Meanwhile, a pair of fee-hunting LaSalle Street lawyers sued the authority over its habit of ignoring the state constitution’s requirement that such agencies–no matter how powerful–must have their budgets approved annually by the legislature.
Tollway Chairman Julian D’Esposito (a class act brought in by Edgar to clean up the Hickman mess) has made light of this legal challenge. But a Cook County circuit judge wasn’t laughing when he sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the state to install budgetary control by Dec. 15., or cease operational spending throughout the 195-mile system.
(A couple of weeks ago, after the legislature adjourned without acting on this, the Illinois Supreme Court stayed the shutdown indefinitely while it mulls over the authority’s appeal. If the high court hadn’t acted, today would have witnessed the mother of all traffic jams.)
Granted, the Supreme Court may side with the defendants, toss out the lawsuit and free the authority to go on building its beltways. But somehow I doubt that’s going to happen. There’s a Democratic majority on the high court (not that politics ever enters into such matters) and Lee Schwartz, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, was one of the behind-the-scenes authors, back in 1970, of our state constitution. He knows his fine print.
At any rate, the well-oiled road-building machine suddenly looks vulnerable to change. Gov. Edgar admitted as much recently when he asked the legislature to redefine the agency, for constitutional purposes, as a “unit of local government.” This gambit drew smiles even from fellow Republicans, for while such a redefinition would solve the lawsuit problem, it would have given the authority even more autonomy than it already has.
The Democrats, for their part, also floated legislation to rein in the GOP fiefdom. But who in their right mind wants to give state lawmakers direct power-of-the-purse over the authority’s $350 million budget? It’s enough of a political pork barrel as it is.
No, what’s needed is to put the Toll Highway Authority under an agency that takes a broader view of the Chicago region’s needs . . . one that knows there’s more to transportation than pouring six-lane ribbons of concrete. My suggestion would be the RTA, since that six-county agency is already in place and has done a fair and reasonably bi-partisan job of overseeing Metra, Pace and the CTA.
More Top Picks Best Xiaomi Phones
Important bureaucratic and fiscal details would have to be worked out, of course. Two toll roads reach beyond the six-county region, and tollway bondholders would have to be guaranteed that their coupons still are good.
Under RTA supervision, tolls would continue to be collected, though as construction bonds are retired, revenues not needed for road maintenance could be made available for other needs. Metra, for instance, is studying the feasibility of the region’s first circumferential commuter rail line, one that would tie together Metra’s Chicago-bound lines using the old Waukegan to Elgin to Joliet (EJ&E) freight right-of-way. Doesn’t that make more sense than paving over western Kane, McHenry and Will Counties?
Put the tollway under the RTA.