‘Chicago’ gets moment in Hall of Fame

It’s at a time like this that I wish the Chicago Transit Authority hadn’t been so uptight about its public image nearly a half-century ago.

Now immortalized, music-wise

Because just think of how unique it would seem if the announcement had been made Thursday that the CTA was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

THE ROCK ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame, to be exact, which decided that the 1970s soft rock band Chicago was one of five musical acts worthy of some lasting recognition for their contributions to our pop culture.

Chicago's biggest band, if not for "Chicago"

Of course, Chicago is the band that has given us countless albums distinguished from each other merely by the numbers used to identify them. Although I’m sure there are some hardcore fans who can tell me off the tops of their heads what the difference is between “Chicago 8” and “Chicago 17.”

 

Now I’m not knocking the band, although I must confess to not having been a big fan of theirs when they were in their 1970s heyday, and think of the fact that they continue to perform and tour as being something along the lines of the fact that The Turtles (a late ‘60s’ band that gave us “Happy Together,” for those of you so clueless) still performs nostalgia concerts.

Not exactly something I want to pay good money for in order to get pricey tickets.

Would anyone really mistake a bus for a band?

BUT THE BAND did always stand out, and not just because of the song “25 or 6 to 4.”

After all, how many bands take on the identity of our home city as their very own? If not for Chicago, we’d have to get all worked up over that ‘60’s band” The Buckinghams, who chose to take on the identity of the Grant Park fountain that the Germans allegedly identify with Al Bundy and “Married, with Children.”

A Chicago band called “Chicago.”

Kind of intriguing, particularly since the band originally created itself as the Chicago Transit Authority – taking on the name of our very own elevated train and bus system.

We stop there today for a hot dog, if they were still open

WHICH, AFTER LEARNING that a real-live rock group released an album called “Chicago Transit Authority,” actually filed lawsuits to force a name change. Which is when they simply became “Chicago.”

Too bad, because let’s be honest. If there’s anyone whose image would have been ruined by the association, it would be that of the band. Who’d want to hear music performed by a group that named itself for the entity that often can’t get people to their destination on time and whose cars and buses have been known to reek of graffiti and body odor?

So we don’t have the CTA making it into a Hall of Fame. Nor will we have officials in Brooklyn (which likes to think it has the ultimate mass transit) having to honor Chicago transit during ceremonies to be held in the spring of '16.

Instead, we’ll be hearing our home city’s name being praised – regardless of what you think of all those horns being incorporated into a musical form that some people think should never advance beyond three guitar chords and a simple bass line.

THAT IS WHY one of my favorite moments from the 1999 film “Three Kings” was the quarrel between soldiers played by Spike Jonze and Ice Cube over what was good music – with Jonze’s character favoring heavy metal and Cube preferring something softer and we hear the intro to “If You Could Leave Me Now.”

Besides, you have to admit that a band (even with its most significant members long gone) that can last for decades and still draw some crowds (no matter how old or nostalgic) has to be worthy of some attention.

Particularly if they bring to mind the finest city on Planet Earth every time somebody mentions their name!

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Rose, Ventra tops 1st gay marriage

I’m not surprised by the news judgment used by Chicago’s two metro newspapers on Tuesday.

Rose tops marriage, ...

The fact that the first legitimate marriage of a gay couple will take place sometime this week – about seven months prior to the date the new law goes into effect – made Page One of both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.

BUT IT WASN’T the lede story. In fact, if one didn’t pay close enough attention, you’d have missed the marriage story altogether.

For the record, the Sun-Times on Tuesday thought that the BIG DEAL of the news lineup came from the world of sports – specifically the fact that Derrick Rose has suffered an injury so severe that he’s going to miss the entire season.

As in again. It’s starting to appear as though the man that Chicago Bulls fans were counting on to be the big star of teams that would win a slew of championships will be nothing more than a “never was” – as in we’ll forevermore speculate about what could have been IF ONLY he hadn’t gotten hurt.

As for the Tribune, they gave a banner headline to the latest story about how messed up the Ventra card system is. Which appeals to the people who use the Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses on a regular basis.

BECAUSE IT WOULD seriously stink if one couldn’t get to work because their fare card didn’t function properly.

Yet the occurrence this week related to gay marriage is one of those bizarre moments that it is something we all ought to be interested in – particularly if you’re one of those people who wants to wish that the issue would just go away!

... as does Ventra

For the record, the General Assembly passed a bill making marriage a legitimate option for gay couples in such a way that it can’t take effect immediately.

There was no way that 60 percent of legislators were going to agree on this issue so as to allow it to take effect immediately. It had to settle for the bare majority (60 of 118 votes), which means the new law will take effect June 1, 2014.

EXCEPT THAT A federal judge (U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, to be exact) issued a ruling Monday that requires the Cook County clerk’s office to issue a marriage license to a pair of women who wish to marry immediately.

Derrick Rose may be gone for good

The women are not a youthful couple, and it seems they have been together for five years and got a civil union in 2011. But one of them has breast cancer severe enough that they’re not sure she will survive long enough for the couple to have a June wedding.

County Clerk David Orr has always said he supports the idea of marriage being available for all; so much so that he didn’t even fight the lawsuit the couple filed last week.

He seemed to be pleased that Judge Durkin issued the order that forced him to issue the marriage license that took effect Tuesday (the couple says they’ll marry this week).

NOT THAT I’M really bothered by the fact that the couple will marry now, rather than later. I’m sure the fact that the law didn’t take effect immediately was one of the few “victories” the conservative ideologues were feeling these days.

But it does make me wonder about the long-term effect on the provisions of state law that require a higher level of support for bills passed after the General Assembly completes its spring session.

Some wish these cards would go away instead

I recall one time that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, specifically thwarted the interests of firearms advocates by requiring one of their bills to get a 60 percent majority – a vote total they could not possibly achieve.

Officials say the ruling by Durkin is so narrow that it shouldn’t impact other cases – or other couples wanting to get married before June 1. But have we managed to undo some sense of our legal procedure? Yet another reason we’ll be confused in the future!

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Wave of the transit future?

There might be one plus to the overhaul the Chicago Transit Authority plans to do to that train line that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway – it could be the act that forces transit officials from city and suburb to figure out how their systems should work together.

Because the way the system is set up now is so oriented to, perhaps, the first third of the 20^th Century – rather than the way the world really works these days.

AT A TIME when some officials think we should be encouraging people to use mass transit more often, we have to accept the fact that the current layout makes such use way too impractical.

There have been times I have lived in city neighborhoods that were laid out in ways where it was utterly practical to rely on the el trains and buses to get around – along with the occasional taxicab.

I can see how some people are able to get through life without an automobile. A part of me wishes I could do that now.

Instead, I keep an aging automobile running because I don’t want the payment of a new car, and the idea of not having any car would keep me completely isolated. Because I’m living these days in a place where I’d be cut off from certain parts of the world.

EVEN THOUGH I live these days just a few blocks (an easy walk) from a Metra commuter station on the Rock Island line that runs from LaSalle Street station to Joliet’s Union Station – where in theory I can catch the Amtrak train that could take me to Springfield, St. Louis or point further on.

Some people don’t even have that much access.

City vs. suburb needs to end....

Which is why I was glad to see the Chicago Sun-Times report on Thursday that has the CTA and Metra trying to figure out how their lines can cooperate. Perhaps some people who now rely on that “red” line train from 95^th Street north to downtown can use a Metra Electric train just to the east to be able to make their commute to work when the CTA line is shut down for a major overhaul.

Because the idea that a system meant to get around Chicago proper and another meant to take people from suburbs to downtown just misses the point.



... for good of metropolitan area



MORE PEOPLE FROM suburban areas might be willing to use mass transit if they could more easily get to locations around Chicago – rather than having to take the trip all the way downtown, then try to figure out how to get to whatever neighborhood they want to go to via the CTA.

And let’s be honest. There are holes in the CTA system. I don’t see any el trains that go to the Hyde Park neighborhood. There, the Metra trains that happen to pass through get used for local transportation needs when they make their stops around 51^st, 55^th and 59^th streets.

Or you can take the fact that el trains only go as far south as 95^th Street – even though the Chicago city limit is largely 119^th Street, and dips as far south as 138^th Street in some points.

That’s a large swath of city ignored by the CTA (to the point where those residents have grown up expecting nothing in the way of mass transit, even though their tax dollars have to pay for it).

FOR THOSE CITY residents who have reasons to venture into suburban communities, life can be just as complicated – unless their business happens to be limited to specific communities like Evanston, Oak Park or Cicero.

Life doesn’t end at those communities right on the city border.

So as CTA officials try to figure out how they can use Metra trains to help their riders cope with the shutdown period next year, perhaps they can also engage in the kind of talks that could someday see us have a truly legitimate metropolitan transit system.

For the fact is that the Chicago area continues to grow (Peotone isn’t really as isolated a community as third airport opponents would like to think it is). Mass transit is going to have to grow along with it if we’re going to be able to go anywhere.

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Who gets mass transit perks?

It’s not much of a secret that mass transit on the city’s South Side is set up a little more awkwardly than it is up north.

There are those North Side neighborhood residents who can get by just fine without an automobile who think it is a sign of their urban “sophistication” that they can figure out how to get around “the city” on the elevated train systemThese are the Indiana commuter trains that could, but can't, pick up South Side residents. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I’D ARGUE THAT if they were true urban sophisticates, they’d live a stint on the South Side, and try to figure out how to navigate around the city in the section where commuter train service isn’t as expansive.

There are those to whom mass transit is “the bus’ and all those transfers that make truly lengthy trips across the city seriously inconvenient. It also creates people who reside in certain neighborhoods into those who rarely leave the neighborhood because going anywhere is such a pain in the butt.

It probably isn’t an accident that many of those most isolated neighborhoods are African-American in population. Not that I need to come out and say there is some sort of racial motive at work. I don’t have to because there are plenty of other people who will do so.

Just this week alone, the Chicago Tribune reported about a lawsuit being filed in U.S. District Court that contends the Regional Transportation Authority’s methods for splitting up state funding for mass transit programs is biased in favor of the suburban-dominant Metra commuter trains and against the Chicago Transit Authority that handles the buses and “el” trains in the city.

THE NEWSPAPER ALSO reported about a new activist group that wants increased transit service on the South Side, and is hoping to use the South Shore Railroad commuter trains to their benefit.

Those trains are the ones that connect South Bend, Ind., to Hammond, then have their trains pass through the South Side en route to their final destination – the Randolph Street station at Michigan Avenue.

Those trains, by agreement of the transit authorities in both states, don’t make stops at stations in the city neighborhoods, even though they share tracks and pass by stations used by the Metra Electric commuter train system that connnects southern Cook County to downtown Chicago.

In short, there are those who want more commuter train service through the South Side, because there are limitations as to how effective bus service can be – particularly since they’re making stops every couple of blocks or so and have too much of a knack of getting backed up during peak traffic times.

SO I CAN understand the reason that these activists are upset and why some people feel compelled to file lawsuits claiming that Metra is getting too much money.

The problem, however, is going to be to convince political people that there is any truth to that concept.

I can recall being a reporter-type person covering political debates that devolved into arguments about mass transit – usually because there were those who believed that it was the Chicago Transit Authority that got “too much” money and that it was the suburban services that ought to be receiving more.

Admittedly, the political partisan atmosphere has changed since those days to favor the city’s interests. But there are still going to be a significant number of government officials who will blatantly resist any attempt to make changes in favor of the South Side activists.

THE BIG FACTOR is just the cultural difference in the way mass transit is viewed between urban and suburban residents.

The latter account for about two-thirds of the people of the Chicago metropolitan area. But it is the CTA that gets nearly 90 percent of all the funding provided by the state for mass transit programs, with the bulk of the remainder going to the Metra commuter trains that connect various suburbs to downtown Chicago.

The actual amount that goes to Pace, the suburban bus entity, is so miniscule that that is the sole reason while suburban bus lines run so infrequently and are non-existent in certain parts of the Chicago area.

Those percentages are justified by officials on the grounds that it is city residents who make up the bulk of mass transit users. Yet it also is those same city residents who are using a system that in portions is more than a century old.

STATE SEN. KWAME Raoul, D-Chicago, (whose home neighborhood of Hyde Park has no CTA “el” trains running through it, but has some Metra Electric line trains that pass by) is sponsoring a bill in Springfield that, while it has little chance of passing, may persuade transportation officials to discuss the issue seriously to avoid having some sort of government intervention on the issue.

I have no doubt that the activists are absolutely correct when they argue that the mass transit service in their respective neighborhoods is in need of a serious upgrade. Yet this might very well turn into one of those issues where everybody agrees there is a problem, but no one is willing to do much about it because of the cost. For as much as the CTA needs a cash influx to improve (cost-cutting only means a reduction in service, which exacerbates the problems rather than resolving them), I have no doubt that Metra trains also need more finances in order to be maintained.

Reading about the federal court lawsuit, I got my chuckle when I read that Metra trains were “mass transit luxury.” I don’t remember anything particularly luxurious about a Metra train the last time I rode one (I occasionally use the Rock Island line Metra trains that run from Joliet to the Southwest Side, then to downtown).

In fact, I can think of CTA “el” trains that were cleaner. Then again, I probably was using a Red Line train to get to some North Side destination at the time.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The federal courts in Chicago and the Statehouse in Springfield are being asked (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/minorities-cheated-on-public-transit-funding-suit-says.html) to ponder (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-metra-southshorejan04,0,2377858.story) whether the problem of lesser quality mass transit service on the South Side is a coincidence, or some sort of legal catastrophe.

Will far South Side "culture" adapt to having the "el" within its presence?

Many people automatically associate mass transit and elevated commuter trains with urban areas.

Heck, mention the “el” and one thinks of those raucous trains roaring overhead cutting through city neighborhoods taking people from place to place.

YET THERE HAS long been a significant portion of the city for which the idea of mass transit and the “el” was a mythical concept – something that exists elsewhere but is just a dream for us.

I’m talking about the far South Side of Chicago – that land where street numbers are in the hundreds and where some of the streets even bear the names of letters (Avenue O, anyone?)

The Chicago Transit Authority gave its approval Wednesday to a project that could someday change that mentality. But I’m wondering if the thought patterns of a whole generation of Calumet Area types are so engrained that the thought of taking the “el” to go anywhere will remain an alien concept.

I’m sure there will be people who live in places such as the East Side or Roseland who will figure they got along all these hundreds of years without the “el,” so who needs it now.

SOME MAY EVEN think they remain in such neighborhoods because of their mass transit isolation from the rest of Chicago.

So when I looked at the graphics prepared by the CTA that detailed how the Red, Orange and Yellow elevated train lines were to be extended, I was unsure what to think – except for the Yellow line, which is meant to stretch out even further into suburban Skokie so that theoretically, people can go from the State Street shopping experience to the Old Orchard Shopping Center.

That strikes me as silly, but I’m sure there is somebody who thinks it is long overdue for people in Chicago to take the “Skokie Swift” all the way to their suburban shopping mall.

Now I will be the first to admit that when I lived in neighborhoods of Chicago on the North and Northwest sides, I loved using the “el” It was convenient, the trains ran somewhat regularly and I literally could get around the city at a moment’s notice without an automobile.

WHEN ONE COMBINES those “el” lines with the bus system, it works well. But the whole city never had the benefit of the setup that exists north of the Chicago River.

Certain parts of the South Side don’t have an “el” line that come anywhere near them – primarily because the major South Side line is that Red Line train that cuts down the middle of the Dan Ryan expressway.

Unless one lives right by the expressway, using those “el” trains were too much of an annoyance to get to. There also is the fact that the Red Line only went as far south as 95th Street, whereas for most of the South Side, the city/suburban boundary is 119th Street and in some parts (like the Hegewisch neighborhood) goes as far south as 138th Street.

95th and the Dan Ryan wasn’t that convenient for many far South Siders, and when combined with the somewhat seedy reputation that particular stop has developed in some people’s minds, it meant that “el” trains were not a part of the daily reality.

SO NOW, THE CTA wants to stretch the Red Line down to 130th Street, while also making stops at 103rd, 111th and 115th streets. A whole new generation of Roseland and Pullman neighborhood residents will get to experience an “el” train as an alternative to the Metra Electric south suburban commuter trains that make a stop at 115th Street.

Will they get used? Maybe.

Although a part of me wonders if those who live in any surrounding neighborhoods will make a trip into a place near the Pullman neighborhood to catch an “el” train.

The sad part of many people, whether urban, suburban or rural, is that they easily get latched into their habits and it creates a mindset. Those attitudes aren’t easy to break.

I CAN’T SEE many people who currently catch a South Shore line commuter train when it makes its stop in the Hegewisch neighborhood giving up that option to catch an “el” train at 130th Street – even though for some people who live in the western part of that neighborhood, it would be closer to their homes.

It is habit that there are no trains when one gets that far south. Those of us who have a problem with that isolation (such as myself, I was born in the South Chicago neighborhood but don’t live there anymore) left a long time ago.

And those who can live with being cut off from the rest of Chicago (such as some of my relatives who remain in places such as the East Side and South Deering) probably aren’t getting all worked up over the CTA’s latest action – which by all admission will take years to become a reality.

After all, the CTA still needs to get money to pay for the project, let alone time to actually construct it.

THERE IS ONE plus.

When that “el” station at 130th Street (just west of the Bishop Ford Expressway) does get built, it will be within eyesight of the landfills maintained by Waste Management Corp., which has gone a long way toward controlling the smell of rotting trash that used to pervade the air throughout the area.

I’d hate to think of having to wait to catch an “el” train while coping with that stench. It would be unbearable, and enough of a reason to find an alternate mode of transportation.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Extensions of the Yellow and Orange train lines will take people to the Old Orchard and Ford City shopping centers respectively, while extending the Red (http://www.transitchicago.com/news/default.aspx?Month=&Year=&Category=2&ArticleId=2435) line will put people within site of garbage dumps.

Is City Hall's political "culture" to blame for CTA funding delay?

A political operative allied with then-Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip, a Wood Dale Republican, once tried explaining to me why it is ridiculously naïve for people to ever expect politicians of Republican and Democratic persuasions to put aside partisan differences and work together for the good of the people.

His theory put blame on the political culture that absorbs Chicago city government and everything it comes into contact with. After watching the General Assembly try to provide adequate funding for Chicago’s mass transit programs, I’m starting to believe his GOP spin.

The problem, he said, lies at City Hall, where Democrats have dominated ever since the election of Anton Cermak as mayor in 1931 (a political trivia note; Chicago Democrats are possessors of the longest winning streak for a specific elective office in a country where legitimate Democratic elections are held.)

There may be Democrats running every single agency of Chicago city government, with Mayor Daley being all-powerful. But that doesn’t mean everybody gets along. Since the division of Democrats vs. Republicans is a non-issue (the city council these days is split 49-1, Dems-GOP), cliques are based on other factors.

For many years, they were based on race. Anybody who watched the City Council in the 1980s under then-Mayor Harold Washington remembers the significance of the numbers 29 and 21 (white aldermen vs. black, for those whose memories are short).

But they can also be based on neighborhoods (South Side vs. North), socio-economic class issues and petty power struggles run amok. My GOP operative said those rivalries were the problem.

Anytime a Republican legislator negotiated some sort of deal or compromise with a Democrat, he automatically picked up all of the Democrat’s enemies.

In the world of Chicago politics, enemies don’t just vote against you. They go out of their way to round up others to vote against you. Then, they try to make you suffer for your arrogance in trying to get something past them in the first place.

“It’s never a problem with the actual issue at hand, it’s always a personal slight with those guys,” the Republican said. “Somebody did something to insult someone or steal a girl away back when the two of them were working their way through law school at night, so they’re enemies for life.

“It’s just so much easier, less of a hassle, to not bother with the other side and try to do it ourselves,” he told me.

That conversation came to my mind when watching the General Assembly this past year. The Democrat-dominated state Legislature and Democratic governor from Chicago oversaw a process in 2007 that still has not yet come to an end.

The General Assembly this week is expected to return to the Statehouse in Springfield to consider a plan to raise money for Chicago mass transit programs by increasing the sales tax by 0.25 percent in the six counties that comprise the Chicago area. It also would create a new tax on real estate deals in Chicago proper.

They already have approved the plan once, but Gov. Rod Blagojevich made a legal maneuver that means he will only approve the bill into law if a provision is added to give free bus and elevated train rides to senior citizens.

Should the Illinois Legislature go along with the Blagojevich change, Chicago’s buses and trains will continue to operate without the draconian service cuts that were threatened by city officials if a plan was not approved by Jan. 20.

It also would bring the General Assembly’s business for the 2007 spring session to an end. So it only took until the third week of 2008 to finish business that was supposed to be complete by May 31, 2007.

I’m not sure how long the spring 2007 legislative session will be recorded as lasting, but it obliterated all previous records.

The record was 1991, when the Legislature did not finish its business until the early minutes of July 19. They were scheduled to end June 30 that year.

Later, in 1993 and 1994, the General Assembly did not get around to approving state budgets and finishing business until July 13 and July 12, respectively.

In all those years, the culprit was partisan politics. House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, was interested in seeing how far he could push then-Gov. Jim Edgar, a Charleston Republican, before having to compromise.

But now, it is the fact that the Chicago Democrat trio of Madigan, Blagojevich and Senate President Emil Jones let their private hostilities for each other get in the way of state business that caused this issue to languish so long.

It means that the City Hall way of doing things (petty feuds prevailing over public policy) has spread its tentacles down south to Springfield, now that the Chicago Dems are firmly in control of state government with no serious prospects of a Republican electoral takeover anytime soon.

Is Blagojevich upset because Madigan may have once snubbed him back in the days when Rod was subservient to the House speaker – he was merely the local politico who represented the Ravenswood and Lincoln Square neighborhoods in the Illinois House from 1993-96?

I still remember the outcry when Madigan, during Blagojevich’s 2002 run for governor, hinted that there were skeletons in Blagojevich’s political life from when he was a legislator, but then refused to elaborate as to what he was talking about. Is Blagojevich still upset that Madigan set up a piece of innuendo against him?

For his part, is Madigan miffed because Blagojevich’s election means he’s no longer the undisputed most powerful Democrat in Illinois state government?

In the mindset of Chicago “machine” politics, Madigan’s purpose for the past three decades was to keep the activities of the General Assembly and state government in line with the desires of Chicago and City Hall. Now, that’s a task for Blagojevich.

Is that why Madigan does nothing to discourage political chit-chat touting his daughter, Lisa (the current Illinois attorney general who actually is highly qualified for public office) as a future challenger of Rod for the gubernatorial post – thereby undermining Blagojevich’s authority now?

And what about Jones?

He has been leader of the Illinois Senate’s Democrats since 1991, but was merely a minority leader until four years ago. Is he still bitter about the way he was treated back in the days when he was the lightweight end of the Democratic leadership in Springfield?

I still recall the jokes that used to fly around the capitol during the 1990s about Jones’ incompetence. I once had a legislative aide privately tell me that Jones’ presence in a private leadership meeting about budgetary negotiations was little more than, “a waste of oxygen.”

This petty bickering wouldn’t matter, except that now it is impacting issues of significance to the general public. As an Illinois resident, I was embarrassed watching the way in which the Chicago Transit Authority was hit with countless “drop-dead” dates and had to have several short-term fixes in order to avoid massive service cuts all throughout last year.

So the big question in political circles these days is to wonder, “Which issue will be dragged out endlessly in 2008 because of the Democrats’ politically feuding ways?”

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Statehouse could pass for Rick's Cafe these days

When I learned that the Illinois General Assembly did nothing Wednesday during its “specially called” late afternoon session to address Chicago’s mass transit funding problems, I felt like Capt. Renault.

The Claude Rains character from the film “Casablanca” was, “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on” at Rick’s Café Americain, and I was “shocked, shocked to find” our state’s Legislature unable to do anything to find the money needed to maintain current levels of bus and elevated train service in the Second City.

I held out slight hope early in the day, when I read stories on web sites maintained by Crain’s Chicago Business and WBBM-TV, both of which noted Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s order to bring the Legislature into session at 5 p.m. so they could take action on some measure that would resolve the funding shortfalls for the Chicago Transit Authority.

Instead, the Legislature snubbed the governor. The Illinois Senate was only in session for two minutes before adjourning. By comparison, the Illinois House of Representatives put in 650 percent more time – which means they were in session for 13 minutes.

Now special sessions in Springfield (where lawmakers are forced to gather to deal specifically with one question) work well when the Legislature’s leaders have a plan, usually one that has been negotiated with the governor.

Lawmakers in the Illinois House and state Senate show up at the Statehouse, participate in the process of ramming a bill based on the plan through legislative committees, and then put it up for a vote by both chambers. Then they go home.

In theory, a Legislature that started at about 5 p.m. Wednesday could have given final approval to a solution by about 2 or 3 a.m. Thursday, and Blagojevich could have signed it into law in the next couple of days.

That would have averted the talk of crisis, by which the CTA says it will have to make major cuts in its bus and train service – 81 of 154 bus routes would disappear and up to 2,400 workers could be laid off – if there is no solution in place by Jan. 20.

But it was a complete waste of time for Blagojevich to call the Legislature into session when there was no plan for how to find the money needed for mass transit.

In fact, there has been no movement whatsoever toward negotiating a solution, as Blagojevich is barely on speaking terms with the two leaders – House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President Emil Jones – who are ostensibly his Democratic allies.

Calling the General Assembly into special session Wednesday was nothing more than a cheap trick by Blagojevich to try to make the general public think it was the Legislature’s failure to act that will cause service cuts.

Chicagoans who wake up on Monday, Jan. 20 and try to take the bus to work, only to discover that their neighborhood bus route no longer exists, are going to be angry. When coupled with the fact that many Chicagoans pay little attention to state government (thinking of it as a second-tier organization that ranks beneath the City Council in importance), many could take that anger out on their local legislator.

That’s really not fair. The legislators who make up the rank and file of the General Assembly would liked to have had a serious plan to consider last night.

They would have enjoyed casting a vote on a solution to the mass transit problem. Heck, they wanted to vote on a funding proposal several months ago. It is not their fault that this problem from last spring has lingered for so long.

For those who wonder why don’t the legislators pass something on their own, it doesn’t work that way. The legislative leaders determine when bills can be called for a vote, and they are not inclined these days to lift a finger to help Blagojevich look good.

Your local legislator is stuck having to wait for the powers-that-be to come up with a solution, and they are nowhere close to doing that. That’s why some legislators have been known to jokingly refer to themselves as “mushrooms;” because they’re always kept in the dark about things.

Of course, the legislators can engage in their own immature behavior. How did they respond to Wednesday’s call for a special session?

After participating in the brief non-sessions, they held committee meetings at the Statehouse, where they spent their time discussing Blagojevich’s proposal to shift $385 million in regional gas tax revenues to mass transit funding.

Instead of trying to find a real solution, they spent their time taking cheap shots at the Blagojevich plan, lambasting the governor for robbing money intended to pay for road maintenance.

No one is seriously trying to find a permanent solution to the mass transit problem. Blagojevich may try to come up with another temporary solution to flush some money to the CTA and delay service cuts, but lawmakers as a whole are more concerned these days about taking steps that will give them political cover and allow them to try to shift the blame off onto someone else.

Insofar as commuters are concerned, what is the bottom line?

People who rely on CTA buses or “L” trains to get to work or travel about town had better figure out an alternative transit solution pretty quickly, or else they’ll be stranded in a Chicago winter cold waiting for a bus that never shows.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The General Assembly’s lack of action Wednesday on mass transit funding problems is detailed here: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/cta.funding.crisis.2.621513.html