Pritzker said he met with leaders of the House and Senate yesterday to talk about ways to shore up funding for mass transit, including rail and bus services operated by Metra, the Chicago Transit Authority and Pace.

Together, the Chicago-area transit agencies face shortfalls of $230 million this year and $800 million to $900 million in the years that follow because of the end of federal pandemic-era aid for public transit. Labor and transit advocates are pushing for about $1.5 billion a year to make what they call transformational investments, such as increasing the frequency and reliability of transit service.

Public transportation is crucial to cities across the state, but nowhere more than Chicago and its suburbs, where transit agencies have warned that they’ll be forced to cut jobs and service if federal funding runs out and is not replaced. Coming up with a fix was seen as one of the most important topics for the veto session, but the sense of urgency appeared to wane after the Regional Transit Authority last month extended the fiscal cliff.

Pritzker dismissed several funding proposals unveiled by the House yesterday, including an untested wealth tax on billionaires and increased use of speed cameras, as well as new taxes on live events and entertainment services such as cable and streaming, and an increase in the sales tax in the Chicago metro area that already funds mass transit.

“There is a common understanding that we need to move this forward,” Pritzker said today. “We want to come together around a bill that will work. . . .That’s what many discussions yesterday were about. There was progress that was made.”

A transit bill passed by the Senate in May, which wasn’t voted on in the House, included a statewide tax on delivery of items ordered online, including food, as well as an extension of a tax on rideshare services.

“There were things in the bill that passed last spring in the Senate that were unacceptable to people in the House, unacceptable to me,” Pritzker said. “There were things in the bill that got passed yesterday in the House that were unacceptable to the Senate, unacceptable to me.”

Pritzker supports fixing the transit problem but has warned he doesn’t support broad-based tax increases, such as income or sales taxes. However, he hasn’t said exactly what revenue sources would be acceptable.

“Compromise often means you give up on something you were passionate about, or at you least you back off a little bit and maybe accept something you may not have liked before,” Pritzker said.

Whether that compromise will be found before legislators leave Springfield remains to be seen.