* Earlier this year, the Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois projected the RTA would receive an unexpected $150 million in sales tax and state matching funds due to a broadening of the online sales tax. TFI has now updated its projection for 2025 to $200 million. Next year’s $225 million forecast has not changed…

The following statement may be attributed to Maurice Scholten, President of the Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois:

The Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois now projects the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) will finish 2025 with at least $200 million in additional sales tax and matching State of Illinois revenues than what the public transportation system expected in December 2024.

Coupled with other RTA cost control maneuvers and outstanding emergency cash reserves, these funds allow northern Illinois public transportation service boards to backfill structural deficits and delay the looming “fiscal cliff.”

Our latest projection is based on data recently available through the Illinois Department of Revenue and the Illinois Office of the Comptroller. We presume steady economic conditions and no disruptions to ordinary tax collections, processing and distribution practices. We also appreciate the budgetary revisions shared Oct. 3 with the RTA Ad Hoc Committee on Transit Funding that more accurately consider a new state sales tax law that took effect on Jan. 1.

If there are no further changes to the Illinois tax structure and present economic trends continue, we still project the RTA will receive in 2026 more than $225 million in sales tax and matching State of Illinois revenues than what was distributed in 2024.

The RTA’s recently revised revenue projections for 2025 are essentially in sync with TFI’s new number.

* More…

* Evanston Now | Gabel says transit solution still needed: Speaking with Evanston Now at a Wednesday evening event in Evanston, Gabel said House Democrats “still feel it’s important to pass” a funding measure that would address the projected $790 million fiscal cliff come 2027 and the $200 million budget gap the transit agency faces next year. RTA said it achieved the drastic reduction in its upcoming gap by “stretching every dollar, managing costs, applying a reasonable 10% increase to fares and finding tens of millions in efficiencies.”

* WTTW | Advocates Say Black Communities Are Left Out of Regional Transit Reform Debate: Denise Barreto, former chief equity and engagement officer for the CTA, said many Black residents on the South and West sides don’t have accessible public transit in their neighborhoods, making them more car dependent. She said she saw stakeholders in transit meetings overlook the lack of access in predominantly Black neighborhoods. “I would see the ways in which Black people in authority were immediately either shut down or not even speak up,” Barreto said. “Black voices get shut out of these conversations because there’s this qualification that you have to ride the system to be able to speak about it. It’s unfair because if I live in South Shore, I don’t have the same access to the system.”

* WTTW | CTA ‘Fully Committed’ to Red Line Extension Despite Trump Administration Move to Pause Funding: “I want to be very clear that CTA is fully and entirely committed to the Red Line Extension project,” CTA Acting President Nora Leerhsen said at a meeting of the agency’s board of directors. CTA was notified of the “temporary pause” in funding for the Red Line Extension and the Red-Purple Modernization effort on the North Side this past Friday. Leerhsen told directors that the agency has a 14-day period that began Tuesday in which to respond to federal officials, and said the CTA will do so in full.

* Tribune | Bernard Joseph Ford, former CTA executive director, dies at 89: Ford started out in the CTA’s personnel department, and later oversaw operations and then was the executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority before returning to the CTA as its operating chief. “Bernie was the ultimate adviser,” said Stephen Schlickman, the former CTA director of government relations and legislative counsel and a former colleague. “What he said needed to get done was done — he had total credibility. And he was the ultimate professional adviser — he surrounded himself with bright people, and he worked with politicians to solve problems.”