Division Street

The Transit Riders’ Alliance issued another “Action Alert” today urging its supporters to contact their state legislators and express their, um, displeasure at the governor and his budget cuts.

“Despite the urgent need to expand transit, Governor Blagojevich line-item vetoed funding for reduced student and ADA fares and the seniors-ride-free program he created in January. (The agencies still have to provide the reduced and free rides, so these cuts will impact the overall operating budget. Amtrak funding did not get cut.)

“The House is scheduled to meet again this week to deal with the line-item vetoes, but the Senate is unlikely to meet before November.

“Please click here to tell your senator and representative to expand transit, not cut it. We need to expand transit now.”

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Former CTA chief Frank Kruesi is being fitted for the jacket for the absolute disaster that is the CTA Superstation - and maybe he’ll even do his boss a favor and wear it. But how does Rich Daley escape from responsibility for once again bungling a big project? Paging the IOC!

“With the new expenditures, the project - originally budgeted at $213 million - will have consumed about $320 million,” writes Ben Joravsky at Clout City.

“I remember when the City Council passed the funding for this project back in 2005. A few aldermen told me they voted for it because they had no choice - it was one of the mayor’s pet projects. Keep in mind, the Olympics is another one of Mayor Daley’s pet projects - which everyone, including Barack Obama - feels compelled to endorse.”

(As if he ever opposed a Daley project. Can anyone name one?)

“Let’s hope the IOC gives the games to Rio,” Joravsky writes. “It will be a miracle if this bunch gets through the games without driving us bankrupt.”

Of course, the Children’s Museum is another pet project destined to go the way of the Superstation, Soldier Field, the expensively screwed-up expansion project at O’Hare, the five-years-behind-schedule CHA “transformation,” the massively overrun 911 center and on and on . . . including Millennium Park, whose mesmerizing Bean seems to have put a spell on everyone who thinks it’s the model of urban planning. And all that is just for starters. (The city is TIF’d to the hilt; consult Joravsky for the skinny on that scheme.)

Is it too pat to say the emperor of city management has no clothes? I mean, I haven’t even mentioned torture, Meigs Field, Robert Sorich, the criminal response to the 1995 heat wave, the police department, or Daley’s Friends & Family Program, which conveniently slips the minds of all those Todd Stroger bashers.

Paging Mike Madigan! I think we’ve got a bill of particulars for impeachment must stronger than the stew of incompetence and corruption emanating from the governor’s office.

Let’s take a closer look at the Superstation, just to get a whiff.

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* Phil Kadner has more on Tony Rezko’s meeting with Jesse Jackson Jr. to discuss the proposed Peotone airport.

* Rich Miller has a dispatch about a state legislator angry about the governor’s slow response to downstate flooding.

* Media Matters has more about that “terrorist fist jab” that Barack and Michelle Obama apparently use to activate secret cells the world over.

* Ben Joravsky has more on Greg Hinz’s story this week about another Daley Special.

* CTA Tattler has more on that too.

At least 24 injuries are reported so far in a Green Line derailment this morning on the South Side - just a day before Mayor Richard M. Daley flies to Athens to learn if Chicago will advance to the next round of competition for the 2016 Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is expected to pare the list of finalists from seven to four or five. That’s cutting it pretty close for Chicago; last fall, United States Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth said that Rio, Madrid and Tokyo were ahead of Chicago. The other contenders are Prague; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan. (Doha just won a nice little award for how it handled the Asian Games.)

It seems unlikely that Chicago won’t make it to the next round - Sun-Times reporter Andrew Herrmann recently said on Week in Review that his sources say it’s a lock, though I haven’t seen that in the paper - but visions in the minds of IOC members of Olympic visitors hurt in train derailments don’t help.

The usual suspects doing the usual things.

1. Can’t Dick Mell just rewrite the law for Drew Peterson?

2. Another great lesson for the kids out there. Will the new Children’s Museum have an Astroturfing exhibit?

(More here . . . read the comments.)

3. “State Senate President Emil Jones declined repeated requests from the Chicago Sun-Times for comment on how he has spent money from interest-free loans.”

Barack Obama said he could not disown Emil Jones any more than he could disown Todd Stroger.

And 17 more witty observations!

CTA president Ron Huberman says more fare hikes may be on the way in part due to the revenue lost by giving seniors free rides, which he says has turned out to be “a pretty expensive venture.”

If we can’t recall Gov. Blagojevich, can we just recall his inane policy decrees?

Meanwhile, Huberman says the CTA is in discussions to build an El station inside a grocery store. He won’t say which one, but I’m guessing it’s a place that sells medical supplies and flashlights.

“Local governments and public agencies in Illinois spent more than $5 million to contract with lobbyists last fiscal year,” says new a study by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

“In a first-of-its-kind research, ICPR identified 110 units of government with contract lobbyists and 65 lobbying firms working for government bodies in Fiscal Year 2007,” ICPR says in a press release. “Several of the governments hired multiple firms to provide advice and to attempt to influence decisions by the governor, state legislators and other state government officials.”

But ICPR isn’t necessarily bothered by the expenditures, which are relatively small - sadly - when placed in context.

“This $5 million of public funds is significant, but it is a small portion of the tens of millions of dollars spent on lobbying by hundreds of corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups represented by lobbyists in Springfield,” says ICPR director Cynthia Canary. “What the public doesn’t know is what special interests in the private sector are spending to try to pass or kill legislation and to impact actions in the executive branch.

“Through the Freedom of Information Act and the cooperation of dozens of public officials, we were able to research public spending on lobbying. But a change in state law is needed to mandate similar disclosure by the private sector.”

The Regional Transportation Authority spend the most money of any government body surveyed: $223,600 on four lobbying contracts. The Chicago Transit Authority was next, contracting with four firms for $220,173.

You can see the whole report at the ICPR’s website.

“The loud thump heard in Chicago last week was the sound of CTA President Ron Huberman falling out of bed as his honeymoon with transit riders came to an abrupt end,” Crain’s writes in an editorial today.

Crain’s goes on to describe Huberman’s initial blame-passengers-first response as a “Lee Elia moment.”

“Until Tuesday’s meltdown on the Blue Line, passengers had been giving Mr. Huberman the benefit of the doubt, hoping he had the right stuff to fix the CTA’s deplorable service. But that goodwill evaporated in the heat of downtown subway tunnels, where hundreds of riders were trapped for hours while thousands more stood on train platforms along the Blue Line waiting for trains that never came.”

And that was before this news: On Sunday night, a Red Line trained derailed at Howard.

“[H]undreds of passengers were forced to get off the train and walk back along the tracks to the platform,” NBC5 reports.

Maybe the CTA ought to start handing out these T-shirts to aggrieved riders.

The Washington Post dips its beak into the Rezko trial.

“Entering its second month, the Rezko trial is an Illinois politics junkie’s dream, full of inside looks at patronage in a state infamous for the conveniently placed ally and the greased palm,” the paper says.

But when it states that Barack Obama is not part of the case, that’s not exactly right. This is a glimpse of Obama’s “political godfather,” and given what we already knew and what we’ve learned so far, it’s no wonder he’s been so dodgy about his relationship with one of the biggest villains in recent Illinois political history.

- Thanks to Garry Jaffe for the tip

“According to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, the recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged aristocrats into the nation’s gentrified urban areas is pushing out young white professionals, some of whom have lived in these neighborhoods for as many as seven years,” The Onion reports.

“A three-block section of [Chicago neighborhood] Wicker Park that once accommodated eight families, two vintage clothing stores, a French cleaners, and a gourmet bakery has been completely razed to make way for a private livery stable and carriage house,” housing policy expert Maureen Kennedy said. “The space is now entirely unusable for affordable upper-income condominium housing. No one can live there except for the odd stable boy or footman who gets permission to sleep in the hayloft.”

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Previously in Division Dispatch:

1. A hooker depot no more.

Plus, Division Street 101.