House Majority Leader Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston) said Democrats in Springfield are still eyeing a more long-term solution to the transit cliff, despite the Regional Transportation Authority projecting a far smaller deficit in 2026 than initially estimated.

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.”

Part of the reduction also came from a hiring freeze, Gabel said, and RTA “using their reserves.”

“We don’t think that’s a real [solution],” Gabel said Wednesday, siding with her Democratic colleagues in arguing against punting the issue despite having a bit more breathing room.

“I’m glad cost controls and stronger receipts helped,” Rep. Kam Bucker (D-Chicago) said in a statement after RTA announced the projection change. “But a shift that big, that fast, is exactly why we need guardrails, transparency and real reform.”

RTA warned that without a long-term funding package from Springfield, its fiscal cliff will climb right back to the nearly $800 million initially projected this year, one that came with warnings of drastic service cuts that could upend regional public transit. By 2028, RTA projects its deficit will top $888 million.

Crain’s Chicago reported the state’s sales tax boost also played a large part in the significant deficit reduction, but estimated that CTA, Metra and Pace could all still see service cuts without action from lawmakers this fall.

Gabel and other lawmakers will return to Springfield on Oct. 14 for a veto session, one she said will focus on bills that “the House, the Senate and the governor all agree on.”

The bill that stalled in the House as the midnight deadline passed in May included a $1.50 fee on online home deliveries statewide, a tax on real estate transfers in Cook County and other collar counties, a tax on taxi and rideshare services and a three-cent-per-kilowatt-hour charge for EV charging stations.

The fees would’ve added $1.5 billion in new revenue to fund and improve the system, lawmakers said, but the lead sponsor of the bill, Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado (D-Chicago), told Capitol News Illinois that lawmakers are looking at “all the different ways that you can slice and dice those revenues” to fund the system.

“We don’t know what’s going to be in it,” Gabel said Wednesday. “We haven’t made a decision.”