Chicago and the state of Illinois have been in the news a number of times over the last couple years, thanks to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich who, in late 2008, was arrested on federal charges of corruption involving pay-to-play politics in Illinois’ top office. The federal corruption trial is getting intense, as everyone is awaiting the conclusion so they can know what the outcome will be for Blagojevich. Just yesterday the jurors came to a standstill as they could only agree on 2 counts out of 24 against Blagojevich , but Judge James Zagel was not completely happy with their progress and told them to continue deliberating. As all of this is underway, another one of Blagojevich’s accomplishments while in office is making headlines in Chicago. In 2008 he added to a piece of sales tax legislation intended to help the transit agencies, which would let seniors get free rides on the local Metro, Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), and Pace. While many were in support of the change, there were also many that objected and predicted that the growing senior population in the region would take a chunk out of transit funding.
Now that we are a little past the half way point in 2010, the data is out on how many seniors are really taking advantage of the free ride program. In 2009 the research indicated that there would only be an increase of a million more free rides in comparison to the prior year. However this prediction was way off, as there were 2.5 million more free rides provided to seniors in the first six months of 2010. Therefore the region is on pace to give out 5 million more free rides over the prior year. This massive increase in free rides is causing financial stress on the transit agencies, and for now all they can do is continue to study the overall impact that the policy is having on the region.
Last month phone conversations were released as part of the federal corruption trial of Blagojevich, and he had some choice words regarding the free ride program. In the audio, Blagojevich is quoted saying “I (expletive) busted my (expletive) and (expletive) people off and gave your grandmother a free (expletive) ride on a bus. Okay?” Clearly, this program is causing some stress among Chicago and Blagojevich.
Asha was born in India, but moved to the states when she was 18 to attend college and study journalism. She has held various writing jobs over here career, and now concentrates her efforts on freelancing for a variety of online publications in different industries. Asha loves cooking traditional Indian food for her family, doing the weekend crosswords in the NY Times, and working in her garden.
This is great news. Its already hard enough for some elderly people, so having things such as this is great to hear.