Blago Nixes CTA

“Gov. Blagojevich, who has criticized the CTA for mismanaging its budget, has appointed former Deputy Gov. Sheila Nix to the transit agency’s board,” the Sun-Times reports. “She had helped to create the Seniors Ride Free Program, which was added on to the RTA bailout bill in January. The CTA expects to lose $26 million in 2009 from giving free rides to seniors, and may raise fares next year.”

A) So Nix is already experienced in CTA mismanagement

B) Nix denied she was appointed by Public Official A.

C) Nix said she would fight against the CTA being used as a patronage dumping ground where politicians are given posts as rewards for lying through their teeth to defend their bosses against an intrusive public.

Daley’s CTA

First, let’s stipulate that the governor is an idiot.

According to CTA President Ron Huberman, the transit agency would have balanced its budget this year if not for the governor’s free ride programs and his elimination of a state reduced-fare subsidy.

And unlike Rod Blagojevich, I don’t think Huberman is lying.

But when Blagojevich accuses the CTA board of “taking its marching order from City Hall,” who can deny it?

The mayor appoints four members to the CTA board while the governor appoints three, and it’s clearly Daley’s board. Moreover, Daley has been mayor for 19 years. He may have inherited the perpetually troubled agency, but it’s clearly his agency – and his responsibility.

Unfortunately, the governor stepped on his message and drew attention to himself instead of leading reporters to ask where Daley’s board is in all of this. And just who is this board? Let’s take a look.

The Beijing Transit Authority

“Chicago Mayor Richard Daley took a subway ride in Beijing on Wednesday as part of his efforts to scope out ways his city might refine its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics,” AP reports.

Daley was impressed, but said that “upgrading an aging public transportation system to be as nice as the one in Beijing isn’t cheap and finding the money to do it is difficult.

[UPDATE: The Trib has a photo of Daley on a train. A Division Street reader wonders if the mayor has ever been spotted on one of ours.]

[UPDATE 2: Here's an AP video report.]

“‘No one can spend this much money. I mean, no one can spend it. I don’t care. What country can spend this much money,’ he said.”

Um, apparently China can.

Daley’s Superstation

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.

Olympic Bid Off Track?

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.

Fare Follies

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.

Lobby Wonks

“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 Elympics

“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.

Bus Service

The CTA is now recruiting to hire 400 part-time bus drivers. In most cities that wouldn’t be a political story, but this is Chicago. Tell them somebody sent you and the road test gets a whole lot easier.

Plastic Chicago

A roundup of this week’s urban plasticity:

* The war on drugs goes micro. The city council may ban those little plastic baggies that drug dealers use for their wares. Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), however, is worried about innocent people who may bet caught up in a sting, noting that “extra buttons that come with suits, shirts and blouses – and jewelry that’s been repaired – come in similar plastic bags.”

* In a cover story titled “The Plastic Plague,” the Reader asks, “Even China has found ways to deal with the glut of plastic shopping bags. When will Chicago get it together?”

* And the CTA is installing fare-card machines that will accept plastic.