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Spring Legislative Forum

The Spring Legislative Forum is the annual opportunity for CTAQC members to focus on the State legislative session. This is a time of action and advocacy.

2005

Click here for notes on each workshop.

Keynote speaker State Representative Julie Hamos, Chair of the Committee on Mass Transit, closed the Forum with an outline of how and why the Transit Funding Formula should be reformed. She distributed a fact sheet detailing the current structure's reliance on 1983 data and why this is sorely out of date for the public transit system of 2005. She suggests that if the paratransit program were removed from the CTA and replaced with a state funded program, this would solve CTA's budget shortfall while providing better, more efficient transit choices for persons with disabilities.

Page 1 of Rep. Hamo's fact sheet as a pdf.

Page 2 of Rep. Hamo's fact sheet as a pdf.

Detailed agenda with workshop and speaker info as a pdf.

2004

The legislative priorities of the 2nd Forum were the northeastern Illinois Regional Transportation Task Force, Context Sensitive Solutions, Safe Routes to School and Location Efficiency.

The 2004 Forum featured a message from Renee Ferguson, NBC Unit 5 Investigative Reporter, emphasizing the importance of the partnership between the media and public. The workshops focused on economic incentives for businesses that choose to locate near transit and affordable housing, Context Sensitive Solutions principles (the policy that encourages road building with all users in mind and with sensitivity to the surrounding communities), the role of the pedestrian environment to suburban bus transit and web-based and traditional strategies of how to organize around transportation issues.

2003

Keynote speaker Tim Martin, Secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), discussed the state budget cuts, the need for increased national funding and infrastructure maintenance as critical concerns for Illinois with over 100 CTAQC members. A panel of state legislators and transportation experts discussed three bills focused on Context Sensitive Solutions, Safe Routes to School and a taskforce to evaluate the region's transportation (CATS) and land use (NIPC) agencies.