INFRASTRUCTURE For this issue area, legislative action and bills of interest are broken into five topical categories. While this isn’t an exhaustive list of all legislation tracked, it does provide a deeper look into the legislation that required the most amount of attention this Spring. Before diving into the key legislation of interest, this section begins with a comprehensive review of one of the most impactful policy topics in transportation and infrastructure this year: mass transit reform and revenue. The mass transit governance reform package, specifically, was heavily discussed and debated over the past year. While capacity to tackle other major transportation topics was limited, the General Assembly also made some legislative changes on procurement, project delivery and regulation of the industry. Mass Transit Governance Reform and Funding Dominate Spring Transportation Discussions After months of negotiation, a year of committee hearings on the subject, and three-plus years of sounding the alarm on the impending mass transit fiscal cliff, a governance reform bill was introduced with only days left on the legislative calendar. After over 40 hours of in-depth public hearings and months of media coverage on the issue, an over 800-page bill was filed in the Senate by Transportation Chairman Ram Villivalam (HB 3438 (Andrade/Villivalam)) and in the House by Leader Eva-Dina Delgado (SB 2111 (Simmons/Delgado) on Wednes- day, May 28th. With just four days of session remaining, and many challenges on adequate governance, struc- tural reforms, and government efficiencies left unresolved, the viability of the legislation was immediately in question. The Chamber has long called for transformative governance reform for mass transit. This session, we have had the pleasure of testifying in committee on the subject, publishing our 10 Business Principles for Mass Transit Reform position paper, and remained in regular communication with each of the transit leaders in the legislature. While we applaud the work of numerous legislators on this critical topic, and the countless hours dedicated to attempting to draft a workable solution, the legislation unfortunately missed the mark on gover- nance reform and budgetary efficiencies and imposed an undue funding burden on consumers and businesses in our state. You can view the letter the Chamber sent Chairman Villivalam and Leader Delgado here. On May 31st, the scheduled adjournment day for the Illinois General Assembly, HB 3438 passed out of the Sen- ate on a vote of 32-22 but was not called for a vote in the House. Conversations will continue, but the path for passage of HB 3438 remains unclear. Provided below is a high-level overview of the governance reforms contained within both the House proposal, SB 2111, and the Senate proposal, HB 3438. There were some changes made to the bill language on governance and funding between SFA 2 and SFA 3 to HB 3438. • The bill creates the Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA), thereby replacing the Regional Transporta- tion Authority (RTA) • A new NITA board structure takes effect in 2026 o A 20-member NITA Board would be appointed by the Governor, Mayor of Chicago, Cook County Board President, and collar county chairs with five appointments for each bloc. • Board members would have to have experience in transportation planning, operations, or finance. • Some appointees would serve concurrently on the NITA/CTA, Metra, and Pace boards in an attempt to align governance. • Requires the adoption of new “service standards” • The Authority would have to adopt service standards to guide the provision of public trans- portation throughout the Chicago metropolitan region. 2025 END OF SESSION 15 | END OF SESSION REPORT
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