Cook County Board President John Stroger’s lawsuit challenging how board members at the Regional Transportation Authority, Metra and Pace are named is being viewed by some suburban officials as potentially disruptive to the balance of power between Chicago and the suburbs.
Carl Hansen, one of five suburban Republican Cook County commissioners, sees the move as divisive. Stroger “wants a cookie-cutter board made of all Democrats,” he said. “I’m surprised that the president would want to do away with this bipartisan effort.”
The lawsuit, if successful, eventually could give Stroger, a Democrat, powers now held by the seven suburban Cook County board members, five of whom are Republicans.
Stroger filed suit Feb. 29 in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging that the process for selecting RTA, Metra and Pace board members runs counter to the Illinois Constitution’s provisions on the separation of powers.
The RTA oversees financial and regional planning for Pace, Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority.
Under state law, eight of the RTA’s 13 board members are appointed by chief executives: two by the chairmen of the boards for Kane, Lake, Will and McHenry Counties; one by the chief executive of DuPage County; and five by the mayor of Chicago. Four more RTA board members are chosen by the seven suburban members of the Cook County Board, not the board president. The 13th member is chosen by RTA board members.
Cook County’s suburban board members also name three of Metra’s seven board members, and six of Pace’s 12 board members.
“The power of appointment is a power under the Illinois Constitution that belongs to the chief executive, not to the legislative branch,” said John Kennedy, a partner in the law firm of Quinlan & Crisham Ltd., which is representing Stroger, “and the (board members) of the (Cook) County Board are members of the legislative branch.”
But suburban officials say Stroger is tampering with a delicate balance struck 26 years ago, when the RTA’s stormy genesis in Springfield came amid suburban fears that, by participating in the agency, their taxes would go to bail out the financially troubled CTA.
“I’m sure there was a political reason for the way that formula was put together,” said James LaBelle, chairman of the Lake County Board. “Certainly what (Stroger) is suggesting would change that.”
Stroger spokesman Jack Beary said Stroger filed the suit out of his desire to receive equal treatment with other chief executives in the metropolitan area. Stroger also wanted to be better able to respond to complaints about Pace and Metra service by suburban residents of the 4th District, which falls mostly in Chicago, where he lives, and partially in the south suburbs, Beary said.
“He was tired of having to say to people that their district has nothing to say,” Beary said.
But Cook County Board member Herb Schumann, a suburban Republican, argued that Stroger’s residency in Chicago does not qualify him to represent suburbanites. “To think that he should have some sort of authority over appointments in the suburbs because he has a small slice (of the suburbs) in his district is wrong thinking.”
RTA spokesman David Loveday said the agency’s officials would have no response before staff counsel complete a review of the lawsuit.