SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday poured cold water on Illinois House Democrats’ latest tax and fee proposals to overhaul the Chicago region’s mass transit systems — prompting pushback from at least one of those lawmakers who said he would like to see the governor’s suggestions to fix the problem.
Just hours after House Democrats proposed a sweeping menu of options to raise $1.5 billion — including new taxes on streaming services and billionaires, adding fees onto tickets for large sporting events and concerts and allowing speed cameras to populate Chicago’s suburbs — Pritzker all but declared the measure dead on arrival.
“I have to say, they sprung a whole bunch of things that have never been seen before. So it’s very hard to evaluate in a short period of time. I think there’s a whole lot of work the legislature still needs to do,” Pritzker said during an unrelated news conference outside of Taylorville, about 30 miles from Springfield. “There’s got to be a lot of discussion between the House and the Senate in order to come up with the final bill because it isn’t going to look like what the House has put forward.”
Pritzker has repeatedly encouraged Illinois lawmakers to come up with a plan to revamp oversight of the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace and stop the agencies from falling off a so-called fiscal cliff that was created as hundreds of millions of dollars in federal government pandemic-era public transit support ran out.
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If a solution isn’t found and the $1.5 billion in transit funding that advocates and some lawmakers say is needed isn’t generated, the agencies could be forced to lay off employees and cut service along bus and train lines.
But the governor, who faces reelection to a potential third term next year, has been hesitant to publicly support any particular ideas for raising funds, which would likely take the form of a new or higher tax or fee, and neither he nor his administration has put forward any specific tax proposals.
Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner, a top House transit negotiator, indicated Wednesday that he wanted to see the governor share his own ideas.
“We don’t get clean, reliable, accountable transit by osmosis. We’ve got to pass something. And we cannot get stuck at no. We’ve got to find ways to get to yes,” said Buckner, who represents part of Chicago. “We’ve got a job to do here. We’re going to do it, but we are, once again, open to any suggestions to make this bill better.”
Buckner noted that, unlike many federal issues the state has recently tried to address, “this transit issue is something that we can be proactive about, that directly affects the people of Illinois.”
The back-and-forth occurred the day after House Democrats, who earlier this year balked at a Senate measure to fix the public transit system, introduced their own plan.
It included a 7% amusement tax on live events statewide and on streaming services such as Netflix; a $5 surcharge per ticket on large events in the Chicago area, such as concerts and sports competitions; and a 4.95% tax on unrealized gains on billionaires’ assets — known in shorthand as a billionaire’s tax, according to lawmakers and the bill. The proposed legislation called for a slight increase in the sales tax rate in Cook County and collar counties.
One proposal buried in the 1,000-plus-page bill would effectively allow Chicago suburbs to install speed cameras, which are currently allowed only in Chicago. The plan calls for collecting 50% of gross revenue from any speed cameras erected in suburban collar counties and turning it over to a new transit oversight board called the Northern Illinois Transit Authority. But Pritzker said he was against the speed camera idea as well.
Similar traffic cameras that catch red-light violators have been embroiled in corruption scandals for years, especially in the suburbs, and the governor seemed to touch on that issue as he talked down the idea of allowing speed cameras to proliferate there.
“We’ve had so many problems with speed cameras in this state. There’s been corruption around them. Honestly, I think we need to take a pause,” Pritzker said.
Democratic state Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado of Chicago, the other top House negotiator on the transit issue, said she and Buckner communicated with the Illinois Senate and the governor’s office throughout the process. The governor wasn’t represented among speakers at a Wednesday hearing where the bill passed out of committee, she noted.
“All of these ideas should not have been a surprise to them,” Delgado said. House Democrats had their own serious concerns with the revenue provisions of the Senate version of the bill introduced this spring, she added.
Pritzker said any new tax proposals presented by the legislature to figure out how to pay for transit need to be run through the Illinois Department of Revenue “to figure out how you might go about collecting the tax or what it would actually yield.”
On the so-called billionaire’s tax, Pritzker, who himself is a billionaire, said “it’s a tax on unrealized capital gains. Never been done before. Never been done before by any state. Never been done before by the federal government.”
Republican opponents and some business leaders also took issue with several provisions of the proposal on Wednesday. Concerns ranged from the administrative burden of the billionaire assets tax to the potential for it to deter downstaters from participating in recreational activities with their families.
The House bill was presented as an alternative to the Senate bill that passed at the end of the spring legislative session, which called for a new $1.50 delivery fee and a real estate transfer tax to pay for the transit overhaul. But House members chose not to call the bill for a vote, instead opting for more negotiations before coming up with their new ideas to raise revenue.
After being asked about the 7% amusement tax, the governor said, “Look, we can go through a whole bunch of things. As you know, the Senate passed a bunch of things last May. This one’s passing, I mean, this isn’t, as it is, it’s not going forward.”
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But time is running short on the fall legislative session, which ends at the end of the day Thursday. And the House bill must clear its chamber and the Senate by then.
Delgado on Wednesday also defended provisions of the bill, including the $5 per-ticket, per-day surcharge on very large events, such as Lollapalooza: the new transit authority would provide event-goers a one-day transit pass for each ticket for the day of the event, she explained, passing the value back to consumers who choose to take transit.
The broader amusement tax has several exceptions. It would not, for example, extend to small events such as concerts at venues with a capacity of fewer than 1,500, according to the bill text, exempting many smaller music venues in Chicago. It would also exempt many amateur sports events.
Apart from the new taxes and fees, labor leaders on Wednesday noted the House and Senate proposals for restructuring the transit systems’ boards were largely similar.
“It seems to me that we should just all sit down again and talk about revenue,” Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea said, adding that the governor’s comments Wednesday were unexpected.
Audrey Wennink, senior director at the Metropolitan Planning Council, expressed concern about using speed cameras as a revenue source.
Expanding the use of speed cameras outside Chicago “is not a bad idea” from a safety perspective, she said. But because speed cameras are supposed to change drivers’ behavior by incentivizing them to speed less, the revenue they generate should decline over time, she said.
At least one village leader, Rodney Craig, village president of Hanover Park and a member of the Metra board, said he supported legalizing suburban speed cameras.
“Nobody pays attention to the speed limit,” Craig said. “Hopefully, this is a solution that will help.”
The CTA has said that without more money, service cuts will begin in August of next year. That’s even with a proposed fare increase of 25 cents per ride to take effect Feb. 1.
The Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the CTA, Metra and Pace, has long warned that the looming structural fiscal deficit will devastate mass transit in the Chicago region if lawmakers in Springfield don’t raise more money.
For months, the RTA said the budget gap next year would total about $770 million. But less than two weeks before the start of the veto session, the agency sharply revised that projection downward, a difference it attributed mostly to an expansion of state sales tax. Now, the RTA says, the budget gap next year is worth around $230 million, but will balloon upward in 2027 and beyond
“I just can’t, in good conscience, not try to — as we lovingly say, land this train,” Delgado said Wednesday.
baiduhai’s Talia Soglin contributed from Chicago.