State legislation to reform and fund regional transit is in danger of collapsing due to disagreements over how to fund the effort, but the lead Senate sponsor says to stay tuned to the final hours of the General Assembly’s spring session.

In a bid to get the transit reforms back on track, lawmakers have looked to tax food and package deliveries, but amid pushback from the restaurants, merchants and some in the Illinois Black Caucus, the effort is on thin ice.

Without the funding, lawmakers have few options and even less time to figure out how to bailout the transit agencies.

Despite the opposition, not everyone was ready to stick a fork in the delivery charge or larger transit bill and carve outs to the delivery fee are being made with promises of more to come through a trailer bill down the line. 

Groceries and medicines will be exempted, Sen. Ram Villivalam, D–Chicago, told reporters just after filing an amendment to the transit bill. He argued there are also costs to not fully funding public transit.

"The million and a half people that rely on public transit every day to get to their job, their school, their doctor, they cannot afford a 40% cut to service,” he said. “We have 17,000 workers that work in public transit. If we don’t act today, 3000 of them will receive layoff notices into the summer and over the fall. That’s not acceptable. Working class families know that this is a responsible package of reforms and funding.”

The new language sets up last day drama as business leaders have resisted the delivery fee and labor and environmental groups are trying to ensure approval.

The long-awaited proposal to overhaul the Regional Transportation Authority, giving the organization a new name and more control over the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace, met stiff resistance almost as soon as it was unveiled, with labor, suburban leaders and the transit agencies crying foul over the revenue package.

Facing the almost impossible task of getting a reform package backed by labor approved with labor staunchly opposed to the revenue streams, lawmakers dropped an up to $1 per day Tollway surcharge that would have brought in between $285 to $350 million.

Also dropped was a proposal to divert a 0.25% sliver of sales tax that counties get for public safety or transportation solely to public transit. Suburban counties had argued the diversion would blow holes in their budgets.

The $1.50 delivery fee is being sold as an “environmental impact fee” by supporters. The growth in deliveries has led to an accelerated “deterioration of surface transportation system infrastructure, according to the amendment. 

The fee would rise annually to keep pace with inflation. The revenue from the fee would be split, with 20% flowing to downstate transit systems and 80% going to the Chicagoland region.

There is an exemption meant for small businesses with total sales in the previous year of less than $500,000. 

The negotiations are happening simultaneously with tense discussions over a $55 billion budget that was unveiled Friday evening.

With the tollway charge fully dead, organized labor is endorsing and whipping votes for the overhaul. Transit advocates and environmental lobbies are also not conceding defeat. 

The transit agencies have warned funding to overcome a $771 million fiscal cliff, deep cuts to service would have to be made. Those cuts would come in their 2026 budgets and hearings would need to be held ahead of time.

Those negotiating the transit bills had balked at placing the delivery fee in the initial bill amid an onslaught of calls from the Illinois Restaurant Association and Illinois Retail Merchants Association warning the tax would be passed onto consumers, raise prices and lead to a decline in sales, according to sources familiar with those discussions.

Those associations, along with a coalition of business groups including the both the Illinois and Chicago chambers of commerce, issued a press release saying the tax would “disproportionately impact communities that rely on delivery services to receive vital items.”

“It will be the highest delivery fee in the nation, and potentially stacked on top of the highest rideshare fees in the nation,” Alec Laird, senior Vice President of Government Relations for IRMA, told Crain’s.

Gov. JB Pritzker did away with a previous 1% grocery tax that went back to local municipalities across the state.

"If the goal of the General Assembly was to provide relief by repealing the grocery tax, I’m not so sure what the goal is by implementing a delivery tax, pulling money from the other pocket that is higher than that repeal,” Laird said.

 “At a certain point it affects the behavior,” Maurice Scholten, president of the Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois, told reporters at a morning press conference.  “It’s a regressive tax. If I buy something for $20, I pay $1 or $1.50, whatever it ends up being. If I buy an order for $1,000 it’s the same amount.”

The amended package retained a 10% tax on all rideshare trips hailed from or arriving in Chicago, Cook County and the collar counties, anticipated to bring in $150 million.

Villivalam did not provide an estimate for the total revenue haul of the new proposal, but it exceeds the $771 millon fiscal cliff and approaches the $1.5 billion the transit agencies say is needed for operations and critical capital spending.

There has been considerably less pushback to the structure and governance reforms in both the House and Senate transit bills. 


Both would create a 20 member NITA board, with the governor, mayor of Chicago, Cook County board president having five appointments with the remaining five being appointed by the board presidents of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

The legislation gives the new regional authority the power the RTA lacks because it would eliminate the 75% supermajority of votes required to make changes binding on the individual transit agencies. The requirement allows city and suburban factions to effectively handcuff the RTA, giving the agency more responsibility than authority.

The new proposal would allow either a 75% supermajority or a 60% majority, so long as at least two appointees from each appointing group approve the measure. 

The changes also alleviated the concerns expressed by the RTA in public, and Chicago officials behind the scenes, that the Red Line Extension would be put in jeopardy due to a prior provision barring the CTA from issuing new bonds other than to refinance debt.

That was not the intent of the bill and was addressed in the amendment. 

An exemption was made to allow the CTA to issue bonds related to the Red Line Extension and the under-construction Red and Purple Modernization on the North Side. The exemption expires in 2032, according to the amendment. 

If costs go higher than the current $5.75 billion project, as outlined with an agreement with the federal Department of Transportation, the new NITA board would have to approve any bonds to cover those expenses.