Daley Throws Blago Under The (CTA) Bus

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Sep 9, 2008 8:15PM

A day after the CTA announced cutbacks to pay for a budget shortfall and began making moves towards an eventual fare increase, Mayor Daley implicitly put the blame on Gov. Blagojevich, especially on the topic of the free rides Blago demanded for seniors.

You want to give everybody a free ride, but who pays for it? CTA has to pay for it....Everybody’s lining up. Where do you get the money?...You don’t get it from heaven...You want to help people. So, why don’t you give the money to help. It’s great to sit there and say, ‘I want to mandate everybody.’ I sound like a great politician. I gave everything away. But, it costs somebody else some money. That’s what they do in the state and federal governments. They mandate it. They want to look good in the eyes of the public. And they say, ‘Let someone else pay for it.’ That’s truly unfair.

CTA President Ron Huberman was non-committal on the fare-hike issue: “We don’t know yet. It depends on how much belt-tightening we can do.”

For their part, the Governor's office denies any fault in the budget collapse, instead blaming "slumping real estate market, declining retail sales and rising fuel costs." The real estate transfer tax increase produced less than half of the expected $7 million revenue for the CTA.