It isn’t enough that CTA passengers have had to hold their breath through the holidays. That’s on and off since Halloween, by the way, not just through December and the New Year. But maybe it is a good thing that their breath was held. As reported by Dana Kozlov for CBS2Chicago.com, Blago said, “It’s like the little boy with a pile of horse manure, I kept digging cheerfully in that and found a pony in there — the pony is free public transportation for all seniors in the state of Illinois.” With this latest stunt, many people believe that Blago is four fleas shy of a full dog and pony show and barking up the wrong tree.
Surely, Blago knows that the money that seniors contribute to the funding of the CTA is already figured into the budgeting decisions put forth by the legislature. One has to assume Blago thinks his grandstanding to seniors will gain him some political advantage, or at least distract people from realizing his promise not to raise taxes has now been officially kicked to the curb. Perhaps he feels he can jerk around the seniors of Illinois because some of them will not be with us at the advent of the next gubernatorial election. A morbid thought, if it ever entered his head. His veto rider to give free rides for senior citizens at the eleventh hour was a ridiculous and transparent bit of theatre of the absolute worst kind.
The sales and real estate transfer tax hike agreed upon by Illinois legislators is just enough to assure a bail out of the public transportation triad, the CTA, RTA (Metra) and PACE. Blago claims that he added the provison to the legislation at the last minute to avoid allowing lawmakers the chance to debate the finer points of just what this would do to the whole package. That is the exact opposite of how a government should consider such important legislation. How the head of state could possibly think it is wise to not weigh the full ramifications of any bill is ludicrous. Of course, legislators were not meant to return to Springfield until February but now they have had to make yet another trip to the capitol to ensure that the CTA was once again saved. Not that anyone should oppose seniors and the disabled getting a break on their fares, but this is simply the wrong time to have made such a proposal, the worst way to go about it and it smacks of the absolute worst kind of political grandstanding. Come on, Blago. Get off the bus, already, and off of everyone’s back while you’re at it.