SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker threw Illinois House Democrats’ latest transit funding proposal under the bus Wednesday as the legislative clock winds down for state lawmakers to agree on new taxes to help the CTA, Metra and Pace avert a massive fiscal crisis next year.
The plan that includes a 7% tax on streaming services and tickets for large concerts and sporting events — among other levies to inject upward of $1.5 billion into the Chicago area transit system — is “not going forward” as is, Pritzker said.
“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,” Pritzker said of the 1,036-page bill filed two days ahead of legislators’ scheduled adjournment Thursday.
“There’s a whole lot of work that the Legislature still needs to do. … 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 said.
The bill championed by state Reps. Eva-Dina Delgado and Kam Buckner of Chicago projects a $700 million tax revenue windfall from the 7% amusement tax that would apply to cable TV packages and streamers like Netflix and Hulu, as well as many ticketed live events.
A $5 surcharge on tickets for events with a capacity over 10,000, was estimated to raise about $125 million, but the $5 surcharge would also serve as a ticket holder’s transit fare to the event, Delgado said.
The plan, which cleared a key House committee Wednesday afternoon, would increase the Regional Transportation Authority sales tax in Cook County from 1% to 1.25%, and from 0.75% to 1% in the collar counties — all to raise about $478 million.
Delgado and Buckner also proposed a first-of-its-kind “billionaire tax” to raise $296 million by dinging the ultra-wealthy for 4.95% of their unrealized capital gains, and authorizing speed cameras in the suburbs to raise some $266 million through traffic citations.
Pritzker was skeptical of the “billionaire tax” that’s “never been done before by any state,” and he flatly rejected the speed camera proposal.
“We’ve had so many problems with speed cameras in the state. There’s been corruption around them,” the governor said. “Honestly, I think we need to take a pause.”
Delgado, who has helped lead transit talks that have dragged on for several years, said the tax proposals “should not have been a surprise” to Pritzker or Senate Democrats who signaled such a bill would face pushback in their chamber.
The state Senate passed a transit bill in the spring that called for a $1.50 package delivery fee, a higher rideshare tax and an expanded real estate transfer tax, but House Democrats are widely opposed to those ideas.
“We’re trying to find a way to spread some of the pain, because there’s going to be benefits to everybody across the state with it,” Delgado said.
State Sen. Ram Villivalam, the Chicago Democrat who shepherded the Senate bill, said he thinks his chamber’s measure is still “most feasible” to avoid the $200 million-and-growing deficit that faces the transit agencies as federal COVID-19 relief funds dry up.
Both sides mostly agree on revamped governance under an empowered Northern Illinois Transit Authority. Labor leaders renewed their call for lawmakers to settle on a set of taxes to stave off mass layoffs of transit workers.
“Whatever we got to do to get there,” Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea said. “The House has five revenue proposals on the table, the Senate did about five. Whatever we’ve got to do to merge those two together, I’m fine with. But we’ve just got to get to $1.5 billion so that the people of Illinois have reliable transit.”
Buckner wasn’t fazed by the tall order of reaching consensus in the waning hours of their session. Lawmakers are expected to gavel out for the year Thursday.
“This is 10,000 folks in the CTA [whose jobs could be threatened]; 3,500 in Metra; 1,500 in Pace,” Buckner said. “It’s incumbent upon the folks in this building to have a response for those folks.”
Elsewhere in the Capitol, the House passed an energy proposal intended to spur development of more wind and solar energy, and Senate Democrats filed a bill intended to limit federal deportations from being carried out in or near courthouses, hospitals or public universities.
A response to the spate of immigration raids across the Chicago area, the bill sponsored by Senate President Don Harmon would also give residents more leeway to sue over alleged Fourth Amendment violations, including civil action against federal agents who wear masks, conceal their identity, don’t wear body cameras or discharge pepper balls without warning.