Transit sales tax hike makes suburbs pay for Chicago problems

Chicago-area transit riders deserve safe, reliable service. But the Regional Transportation Authority board might soon ask the wrong people to pay for it.

Illinoisans shouldn’t be taxed for a service they can’t use, but the Regional Transportation Authority board is expected to vote on doing just that: imposing a regionwide sales-tax increase.

The board will meet Dec. 18 to adopt its 2026 budget, which relies on raising the RTA sales tax by 0.25 percentage point across Cook County and the collar counties. Pritzker is expected before 2026 to sign the bill authorizing the tax, which would take effect July 1 and then need final transit board approval within 60 days.

Supporters argue it’s needed to avoid looming service cuts and big fare hikes tied to transit’s “fiscal cliff.” But the tax collects money from suburban shoppers with sparse transit options and sends it to the urban areas where agencies have made poor decisions and failed to enact needed change. It also lets leaders ignore existing funds already taken from taxpayers.

What is the RTA sales tax?

To fund CTA, Metra and Pace, residents in areas served by mass transit currently pay:

• 1% sales tax on general merchandise in Cook County.
• 1.25% sales tax on qualifying food, drugs, and medical appliances in Cook County.
• 0.75% sales tax on general merchandise and qualifying food, drugs, and medical appliances in DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

If Pritzker and the RTA board approve, the 0.25% will be added to all three existing sales taxes to generate $478 million leaders claim is needed to avoid transit’s fiscal cliff. That fiscal cliff is mostly a Chicago Transit Authority problem: Metra and Pace serve the suburbs and have challenges of their own, but the CTA dominates the RTA’s budget.

Penalizing people who don’t use CTA is a problem when it takes the biggest share of the budget. Part of the funding solution is using money from the state’s road fund, which has more than $3 billion taxpayers have already contributed. The state should spend what it already has before taking more.

If more money from the road fund goes to the regional authority, improved service would incentivize people to use transit rather than drive. That, in turn, would reduce wear and tear on the roads.

More revenue without accountability just rewards the same practices that got the agencies into their current mess.

No one wants riders punished with deep service cuts. Transit matters to the region. But it doesn’t make sense to impose a sales tax hike on non-users to cover for poor choices.

The RTA board’s vote is a clear choice: raise taxes on suburban shoppers to patch CTA’s budget or fix the system first and use existing transportation dollars. The region’s residents should demand the second path.