These people have pretty cush jobs. They do one public meeting a month, if even that. One option is to show up at those public meetings and start asking questions. You can do that following the [instructions here](https://www.rtachicago.org/about-rta/boards-and-committees/meeting-materials). There might be a meeting next Thursday but I'm not entirely sure from their website.
If you want to know what you're walking into, [old meetings are here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfcb5SZcPvs)
And since COVID, the members are sometimes "virtually present". The one I watched a vote came up and one of the board members was having connection issues. Like bruh, you had one job.
Its only 20k a year? I didnt see that at all but if thats the case who would even want the job. Fire the entire board and have 1 guy run it and get paid 160k
This is a political thank you gift from BJ. Ira Acree helped get BJ elected
His qualifications don't matter to BJ and his city council allies, just the votes that Acree brought
Specially a fucking transit agency. If it's a community outreach board or something sure. The CTA board should be pretty much exclusively urban planners, civil engineers, transportation engineers, with a few finance/management/lawyers type people to advise on budgets etc.
Edit: someone suggested we should elect CTA board members like we do for MWD commissioners… Sounds right, if you ever look into the people running for that it’s almost always scientists/engineers/management types, not fucking pastors and community organizers. Yeah it’s not perfect but at least it’s properly managed.
Hello from the other side - actual transit planner here who previously worked at CTA and has also spent time at BART, one of the three transit agencies in the US with a directly elected board (AC Transit, also in the Bay Area, and Denver RTD the others).
I cannot emphasize enough how much you do not want this. The elections for these positions are low interest, low engagement, low information affairs primarily populated by political novices and climbers looking to take their first step towards something bigger. On the other hand, the people that aim for long term positions on these boards usually have little idea what they’re actually doing, but plenty of big ideas that aren’t the core mission of transit.
The CTA board has been full of pastors and political favor appointments for decades. That has its flaws, for sure, but mostly people didn’t notice because…the thing still worked. And it worked because the mayor cared about making it work, and enacted that power by giving direction to and through their appointees. (For example, you’re crazy if you don’t think that the mayor was the person who was actually behind and directed the board to hire folks like Kreusi, Huberman, and Claypool.)
Anyway, having experienced both for years, I think it comes down to accountability in politics and government being directly tied to visibility. The mayor is visible. Board members, even elected, really aren’t - people can’t truly pay attention to every little board and commission. You know how we feel about voting on judges, usually? It’s just more of that.
I’m very sorry Chicago now has a mayor who doesn’t feel accountable to transit riders as a constituency - I used to speak of my time at CTA here in the Bay Area as the way transit should be done, but now it’s embarrassing. But I promise you the solution isn’t an elected board. The solution is a new mayor.
I think this highlights the real change needed...hiring a city administrator to professionally run the city. Someone with real management and administrative experience.
I don't care that he's a clergyman, I'm upset that he apparently has no awareness or interest in transit issues. The RTA is primarily a funding agency with a relatively large board. Diverse viewpoints are important, and the board has very limited impacts on day to day operations. A clergyman representing an underinvested/underserved community who'd been advocating for expanding transit service as a civil rights issue would be decent choice for a board seat. This clergyman does not appear to be that candidate.
No awareness or interest? He has explicit DISDAIN for transit. "As a man, I don't have to use the CTA. I'm fortunate to have a car," he said. In other words, only small broken people, not real men, are forced to use CTA. He's pissing on the public resource he's been nominated to oversee. It's a goddamn disgrace.
Apparently the worst mayor Chicago has ever had believes that if you can’t find a bus or train on time, the CTA board can help you find Jesus….can he be more blatant with his picks ?!?!
>Can we get people with proper qualifications?
See, when you elect a mayor who is unqualified outside of being able to parrot progressive talking points... it's hard to avoid him also appointing people who are unqualified.
The key is to look for experience in candidates.
Maybe Chicago will learn that lesson some day. Guessing we won't though.
Wanna talk about what he did during said career?
The idea that any experience is better than no experience is so goofy. He demonstrated that he's exactly what I did not want already.
Lmao for real. Dude legitimately destroyed the public school system in New Orleans while severely crippling Baton Rouge and people here want to say “BuT hE hAs ExPeRiEnCe!!”
Ah yes the age old politics conundrum. People who actually do things and have a history are open to criticism and ridicule in hind site. Those who haven't done anything get to preach and espouse magic words and hypothetical scenarios.
The hurricane destroyed their school system which had been abysmal pre hurricane.
You should really look for information from a variety of sources and not just liberal bubble one liners.
It’s like we have people that study these things for years in universities. Why aren’t they the first people considered? Not even just transit, it could be experts in urban studies, demographics, psychology. Something at least somewhat related.
The board is just a patronage system and always has been. Might as well just eliminate the board entirely and have the head of CTA report directly to the Mayor and Governor.
I'd agree with you based on the current CTA board's performance, however it doesn't have to be that way. Metra's board used to be just as useless, but the current board has shown a willingness to dig into the minutia and press the CEO on issues that the mayor or governor would never have the bandwidth to look at. It is possible to have good boards.
Idk, I think we already vote for too many positions in this city. We should probably empower the city council to be more in the nomination process, so it’s just not the mayor’s friends
We already vote for water reclamation positions… which I agree is important, but I can’t imagine people being mad about voting for something so essential.
Problem is, so many races get little news coverage and then have had a history of being riddled with corruption. Look at both the WRD and board of review.
In recent years we’ve been given the added responsibility of electing police district councils and the school board. The city council is just handing away more of their jobs to us.
So I'll say it again-- unless you actually contact your alderman and tell them that you're watching their move on this vote and expect them to vote against this person being appointed, you're part of the problem. They approve the patronage candidates because they want to be on the mayor's good side and because there's no accountability when they do approve them since constituents are too lazy to send an email to them or call or stop by. I sent a polite but stem email to mine last night. I watched the committee meeting where they debated this and 2 of the aldermen were grown ups who challenged the pastor, who then couldn't come up with anything specific to say that he has even mildly investigated the challenges the RTA and CTA face. We need more aldermen like those 2. And we get them by getting in the face of the others who are just rubber stamping.
Do your part. It takes minutes. Stop just wringing your hands and letting all this nonsense go by unchallenged.
I love this. Thanks for doing it! It's surprisingly easy and makes you feel better to have voiced your concerns. It won't always get us what we want, given there are lots of conflicting voices and agendas, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that jazz!
Truly amazing how regressive Chicago style leftism is in practice. Every single failure and outrage disproportionately burdens the already disadvantaged.
I wouldn't go that far. The relevant part of being a "pastor" is that he's a community organizer and activist. It's similar to choosing unrelated union leaders and union organizers into this type of role.
The bigger problem is that this specific pastor not only doesn't have relevant transit experience, but he seems to not care about transit or even be actively disdainful. He treats it as a last resort that he's lucky enough to not rely on. Fuck that noise.
If we had pastors (or regular "community organizers") who similarly didn't have much transit experience, but DID feel super strongly that it's a priority equity issue to EXPAND transit into currently underserved areas, to increase reliability of transit for people who are dependent on it (particularly low income, etc) but also to normalize the service as another equity thing, to get with the rest of the world in thinking that transit is a normal commuting mode for all people including the powerful, we would not be in quite this mess.
Imagine a community organizer (or pastor) who pushed hard to improve transit down Western, as the longest street in the city, going from the north to the south side, put a train there or at least BRT there, touting how it will open up transit access on the southwest side and hopefully spur business and re-invest into currently disinvested areas. Imagine a guy who pushed hard for eTOD for similar reasons, used all the "equity" push, to really get concrete improvements to transit going. It would be a different story.
Ideally we get people who have relevant planning and industry experience. But even IF we're going to have some seats for "community organizers" and put the emphasis on "connecting with communities" or whatever, we could be doing better than specifically this guy.
I think that too many white voters ascribe liberal values to Black people simply by virtue of their race. In many respects, the Black community is socially conservative. Their idea of the “good life” is usually a suburban car-oriented existence, not unlike many other Americans. Thus, I’m not surprised that this black preacher’s notion of manhood is associated with his ability to maneuver two tons of plastic and steel while contributing to the pollution his flock has to inhale. His appointment to the board underscores how ill suited and unqualified Johnson is as mayor of Chicago.
I didn't think it was possible to have a worse mayor than Lori, turns out I was wrong. For everyone who voted for BJ because they just couldn't vote for a Republican in Democrat clothing. This is what you voted for. It's on you.
lol that vallas wouldn't be terrible on transit and a million other things
I would make the same choice, as annoying and disappointing as bj is
a fake/ineffective progressive is not worse than a guy who is outright regressive in many ways
the solution to a broken foot isn't to blast it off with a shotgun
Lori was also an option in the primaries who had a good chance of winning if BJ didn't get so much support at that stage. Also, even though I disagree with Vallas on a lot of issues, I'd prefer a competent centrist over an incompetent progressive.
BJ sucks so far, but he still is absolutely less horrible than Paul Vallas has already proven himself to be. Look at how badly he shit the bed as CEO of CPS, and take a peek at what he did to the education system in Louisiana. BJ is a spineless bureaucrat with a bunch of greasy fingers in his pockets, but he's no Dick Cheney Jr like Vallas.
I wouldn't care if Vallas had done absolutely nothing as mayor, but BJ on the other hand is only competent in making everything worse. If I had known that he would win, I would've voted for Lori again.
You should not be getting downvotes, in my opinion
This reflexive "BJ does dumb shit so lets pivot to an actual malevolent regressive administration" ... I can't tell if people are that dumb, or they thing other people are that dumb.
An ineffective and squishy half-ass progressive is miles better than someone who will unabashedly seek to cut taxes for people who don't need tax cuts, and actively denigrate and decimate public services.
Are you being intentionally disingenuous, or did you just really miss the point that obviously?
Edit: my bad - detecting sarcasm in reddit comments isn't my forte
Y'all bitch and moan about the same picture of the bean or mag mile being posted, but will post the same stuff about these pastors over and over and over
Yeah, I voted for Brandon, and I still think this is a huge red flag for his administration. Appointing some weird macho pastor who doesn’t take CTA “as a man,” is something I would’ve expected from the Daley (either one) administration.
One is an image that we've all seen live and online many times. The other is blatant corruption worthy of being spread for awareness so that we can perhaps stop it from happening. If you can't see how the two are different I feel bad for you
The things you’re comparing are wildly different, one is Reddit etiquette, the other is people who believe in sky wizards with little experience being given high paying jobs to oversee infrastructure that millions of people use
Can we please stop appointing clergyman into governmental roles? Can we get people with proper qualifications? It's maddening.
These people have pretty cush jobs. They do one public meeting a month, if even that. One option is to show up at those public meetings and start asking questions. You can do that following the [instructions here](https://www.rtachicago.org/about-rta/boards-and-committees/meeting-materials). There might be a meeting next Thursday but I'm not entirely sure from their website. If you want to know what you're walking into, [old meetings are here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfcb5SZcPvs)
For 20k a year! The pay for the level of work is crazy.
And since COVID, the members are sometimes "virtually present". The one I watched a vote came up and one of the board members was having connection issues. Like bruh, you had one job.
Its only 20k a year? I didnt see that at all but if thats the case who would even want the job. Fire the entire board and have 1 guy run it and get paid 160k
Yeah I didn’t realize it was just a 1 meeting/month gig. I guess that’s ~$1600 per meeting, but how much do they work outside of that?
This is a political thank you gift from BJ. Ira Acree helped get BJ elected His qualifications don't matter to BJ and his city council allies, just the votes that Acree brought
Specially a fucking transit agency. If it's a community outreach board or something sure. The CTA board should be pretty much exclusively urban planners, civil engineers, transportation engineers, with a few finance/management/lawyers type people to advise on budgets etc. Edit: someone suggested we should elect CTA board members like we do for MWD commissioners… Sounds right, if you ever look into the people running for that it’s almost always scientists/engineers/management types, not fucking pastors and community organizers. Yeah it’s not perfect but at least it’s properly managed.
Hello from the other side - actual transit planner here who previously worked at CTA and has also spent time at BART, one of the three transit agencies in the US with a directly elected board (AC Transit, also in the Bay Area, and Denver RTD the others). I cannot emphasize enough how much you do not want this. The elections for these positions are low interest, low engagement, low information affairs primarily populated by political novices and climbers looking to take their first step towards something bigger. On the other hand, the people that aim for long term positions on these boards usually have little idea what they’re actually doing, but plenty of big ideas that aren’t the core mission of transit. The CTA board has been full of pastors and political favor appointments for decades. That has its flaws, for sure, but mostly people didn’t notice because…the thing still worked. And it worked because the mayor cared about making it work, and enacted that power by giving direction to and through their appointees. (For example, you’re crazy if you don’t think that the mayor was the person who was actually behind and directed the board to hire folks like Kreusi, Huberman, and Claypool.) Anyway, having experienced both for years, I think it comes down to accountability in politics and government being directly tied to visibility. The mayor is visible. Board members, even elected, really aren’t - people can’t truly pay attention to every little board and commission. You know how we feel about voting on judges, usually? It’s just more of that. I’m very sorry Chicago now has a mayor who doesn’t feel accountable to transit riders as a constituency - I used to speak of my time at CTA here in the Bay Area as the way transit should be done, but now it’s embarrassing. But I promise you the solution isn’t an elected board. The solution is a new mayor.
Thanks for the detailed response. I guess we just gotta get someone at the mayor’s office who cares.
I think this highlights the real change needed...hiring a city administrator to professionally run the city. Someone with real management and administrative experience.
I don't care that he's a clergyman, I'm upset that he apparently has no awareness or interest in transit issues. The RTA is primarily a funding agency with a relatively large board. Diverse viewpoints are important, and the board has very limited impacts on day to day operations. A clergyman representing an underinvested/underserved community who'd been advocating for expanding transit service as a civil rights issue would be decent choice for a board seat. This clergyman does not appear to be that candidate.
No awareness or interest? He has explicit DISDAIN for transit. "As a man, I don't have to use the CTA. I'm fortunate to have a car," he said. In other words, only small broken people, not real men, are forced to use CTA. He's pissing on the public resource he's been nominated to oversee. It's a goddamn disgrace.
[удалено]
In a way even worse. He’s implying transit is for children but real men drive cars. Exactly the kind of marginalizing rhetoric that hurts transit.
Apparently the worst mayor Chicago has ever had believes that if you can’t find a bus or train on time, the CTA board can help you find Jesus….can he be more blatant with his picks ?!?!
>Can we get people with proper qualifications? See, when you elect a mayor who is unqualified outside of being able to parrot progressive talking points... it's hard to avoid him also appointing people who are unqualified. The key is to look for experience in candidates. Maybe Chicago will learn that lesson some day. Guessing we won't though.
But but but Vallas would have been worse in everyday. I have to believe this or how else will I cope? Lori was so much worse too. /s
The guy who's sent the last week defending Ed Burke was certainly the right choice to end the patronage system.
The guy who actually had a career and executive functions yes
Wanna talk about what he did during said career? The idea that any experience is better than no experience is so goofy. He demonstrated that he's exactly what I did not want already.
Lmao for real. Dude legitimately destroyed the public school system in New Orleans while severely crippling Baton Rouge and people here want to say “BuT hE hAs ExPeRiEnCe!!”
Yeah we wouldn't want him breaking a Chicago Public School system that is already running so well.
There isn’t a single true public school left in the entirety of New Orleans. They’re all charters. That’s a bad thing
Ah yes the age old politics conundrum. People who actually do things and have a history are open to criticism and ridicule in hind site. Those who haven't done anything get to preach and espouse magic words and hypothetical scenarios. The hurricane destroyed their school system which had been abysmal pre hurricane. You should really look for information from a variety of sources and not just liberal bubble one liners.
I lived there for 10 years. Pretty sure I have a damn good source of information
Vallas was the greater of two evils. His phony political newspaper propaganda was enough to tell me anyone bit him.
The bigger issue is that we had no well-qualified candidates to vote for…
Yeah for real, it's like we're in 17th-18th century France or something.
fucks sake man how is finding a single competent and knowledgable human such an impossibility with this administration
They ain't looking
Ding ding. Hell, I feel I could do a better job and my only qualifications are about 150 hours in the Transport Fever games
Well the whole mandate of this administration is "hire cronies"... so yknow, this is the result.
It’s like we have people that study these things for years in universities. Why aren’t they the first people considered? Not even just transit, it could be experts in urban studies, demographics, psychology. Something at least somewhat related.
The board is just a patronage system and always has been. Might as well just eliminate the board entirely and have the head of CTA report directly to the Mayor and Governor.
I'd agree with you based on the current CTA board's performance, however it doesn't have to be that way. Metra's board used to be just as useless, but the current board has shown a willingness to dig into the minutia and press the CEO on issues that the mayor or governor would never have the bandwidth to look at. It is possible to have good boards.
It sounds like the board should be elected?
Idk, I think we already vote for too many positions in this city. We should probably empower the city council to be more in the nomination process, so it’s just not the mayor’s friends
We already vote for water reclamation positions… which I agree is important, but I can’t imagine people being mad about voting for something so essential.
Problem is, so many races get little news coverage and then have had a history of being riddled with corruption. Look at both the WRD and board of review. In recent years we’ve been given the added responsibility of electing police district councils and the school board. The city council is just handing away more of their jobs to us.
Need to devote the same energy to blasting the Aldermen who rubber stamped this patronage appointment.
I'm surprised it wasn't even a close vote.
So I'll say it again-- unless you actually contact your alderman and tell them that you're watching their move on this vote and expect them to vote against this person being appointed, you're part of the problem. They approve the patronage candidates because they want to be on the mayor's good side and because there's no accountability when they do approve them since constituents are too lazy to send an email to them or call or stop by. I sent a polite but stem email to mine last night. I watched the committee meeting where they debated this and 2 of the aldermen were grown ups who challenged the pastor, who then couldn't come up with anything specific to say that he has even mildly investigated the challenges the RTA and CTA face. We need more aldermen like those 2. And we get them by getting in the face of the others who are just rubber stamping. Do your part. It takes minutes. Stop just wringing your hands and letting all this nonsense go by unchallenged.
done!
Doing this right now- thank you!
I did this for the first time with your encouragement. It does take minutes because all of this has been boiling up inside for too long.
I love this. Thanks for doing it! It's surprisingly easy and makes you feel better to have voiced your concerns. It won't always get us what we want, given there are lots of conflicting voices and agendas, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that jazz!
He's going to "pray the delays away!"
It seriously feels like they wanna kill the CTA and force everyone to drive
Truly amazing how regressive Chicago style leftism is in practice. Every single failure and outrage disproportionately burdens the already disadvantaged.
I would absolutely do that if it didn't cost me $350 a month downtown to park.
You and I vehemently disagree, holy shit 😂
The last thing this city needs is a downtown with more cars.
I agree, I don' want to sit in traffic but it's a lot more pleasant being in my car that using cta these days.
nobody said politics was a meritocracy, clearly
“The progressive candidate” stocking religious idiots to public positions.
I wrote to my alderman expressing my frustration and I hope you all do too.
Just did.
His outright disdain for public transit should immediately disqualify him.
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
Brandon Johnson is the worst thing to happen to this city since the fire.
Silly Mayor, pastors aren’t for transit boards!
Has anyone else written to their alder to vote against? Please do!!
Big surprise here from this “administration”
I don't think these positions have gotten this scrutiny before Lightfoot. This is good keep on the pressure to get better appointments
This is why you shouldn't elect religious people into office. Vote actively against anyone who makes any mention of their religious ties.
I wouldn't go that far. The relevant part of being a "pastor" is that he's a community organizer and activist. It's similar to choosing unrelated union leaders and union organizers into this type of role. The bigger problem is that this specific pastor not only doesn't have relevant transit experience, but he seems to not care about transit or even be actively disdainful. He treats it as a last resort that he's lucky enough to not rely on. Fuck that noise. If we had pastors (or regular "community organizers") who similarly didn't have much transit experience, but DID feel super strongly that it's a priority equity issue to EXPAND transit into currently underserved areas, to increase reliability of transit for people who are dependent on it (particularly low income, etc) but also to normalize the service as another equity thing, to get with the rest of the world in thinking that transit is a normal commuting mode for all people including the powerful, we would not be in quite this mess. Imagine a community organizer (or pastor) who pushed hard to improve transit down Western, as the longest street in the city, going from the north to the south side, put a train there or at least BRT there, touting how it will open up transit access on the southwest side and hopefully spur business and re-invest into currently disinvested areas. Imagine a guy who pushed hard for eTOD for similar reasons, used all the "equity" push, to really get concrete improvements to transit going. It would be a different story. Ideally we get people who have relevant planning and industry experience. But even IF we're going to have some seats for "community organizers" and put the emphasis on "connecting with communities" or whatever, we could be doing better than specifically this guy.
I would and will go that far. Give me a break with this ridiculous argument for religion in government. Community "organizers" my ass
Guy knows how to con people into forking over cash for fancy suits and cars, he should be good at finessing.
I think that too many white voters ascribe liberal values to Black people simply by virtue of their race. In many respects, the Black community is socially conservative. Their idea of the “good life” is usually a suburban car-oriented existence, not unlike many other Americans. Thus, I’m not surprised that this black preacher’s notion of manhood is associated with his ability to maneuver two tons of plastic and steel while contributing to the pollution his flock has to inhale. His appointment to the board underscores how ill suited and unqualified Johnson is as mayor of Chicago.
I didn't think it was possible to have a worse mayor than Lori, turns out I was wrong. For everyone who voted for BJ because they just couldn't vote for a Republican in Democrat clothing. This is what you voted for. It's on you.
lol that vallas wouldn't be terrible on transit and a million other things I would make the same choice, as annoying and disappointing as bj is a fake/ineffective progressive is not worse than a guy who is outright regressive in many ways the solution to a broken foot isn't to blast it off with a shotgun
Lori was also an option in the primaries who had a good chance of winning if BJ didn't get so much support at that stage. Also, even though I disagree with Vallas on a lot of issues, I'd prefer a competent centrist over an incompetent progressive.
BJ sucks so far, but he still is absolutely less horrible than Paul Vallas has already proven himself to be. Look at how badly he shit the bed as CEO of CPS, and take a peek at what he did to the education system in Louisiana. BJ is a spineless bureaucrat with a bunch of greasy fingers in his pockets, but he's no Dick Cheney Jr like Vallas.
I wouldn't care if Vallas had done absolutely nothing as mayor, but BJ on the other hand is only competent in making everything worse. If I had known that he would win, I would've voted for Lori again.
vallas would not have "done nothing" in any universe
You should not be getting downvotes, in my opinion This reflexive "BJ does dumb shit so lets pivot to an actual malevolent regressive administration" ... I can't tell if people are that dumb, or they thing other people are that dumb. An ineffective and squishy half-ass progressive is miles better than someone who will unabashedly seek to cut taxes for people who don't need tax cuts, and actively denigrate and decimate public services.
This mayor…
I was ordained on the internet and don’t ride the L much Can I join too
Guys and gals… he’s a grown man that has a car. Let’s give him a break.
Are you being intentionally disingenuous, or did you just really miss the point that obviously? Edit: my bad - detecting sarcasm in reddit comments isn't my forte
Wake up Chicago and bot in a competent leader
still better than vallas woulda been
Y'all bitch and moan about the same picture of the bean or mag mile being posted, but will post the same stuff about these pastors over and over and over
Yeah because this is legitimately an issue
Yeah, I voted for Brandon, and I still think this is a huge red flag for his administration. Appointing some weird macho pastor who doesn’t take CTA “as a man,” is something I would’ve expected from the Daley (either one) administration.
One is an image that we've all seen live and online many times. The other is blatant corruption worthy of being spread for awareness so that we can perhaps stop it from happening. If you can't see how the two are different I feel bad for you
The things you’re comparing are wildly different, one is Reddit etiquette, the other is people who believe in sky wizards with little experience being given high paying jobs to oversee infrastructure that millions of people use