{"id":539026,"date":"2010-04-21T16:36:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T20:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef013480091242970c"},"modified":"2010-04-21T16:36:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T20:36:46","slug":"push-to-eliminate-free-rides-for-seniors-fails-in-state-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/539026","title":{"rendered":"Push to eliminate free rides for seniors fails in state Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Ray Long<\/em> at 3:35 p.m.<\/p>\n

SPRINGFIELD — A push to eliminate free local bus and train rides to all but low-income senior citizens failed today in the Illinois Senate.<\/p>\n

Under the bill, senior citizens 65 and older would have keep riding for
\nfree only if they qualified for the state’s circuit breaker program. That means a single senior with a yearly income of less than $27,610 or a two-person household making less than $34,635 a year.\n<\/p>\n

The legislation passed the House earlier this year<\/a> but today failed in the influential Senate Executive Committee. Six senators voted for the restrictions on free rides while seven voted against the measure.<\/p>\n

Sponsoring lawmakers had hoped to save mass transit agencies between $37 million and $50
\nmillion.<\/p>\n

\n

Seniors with higher incomes would have gotten to ride at half price on the
\nChicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace. That’s the same discount
\nseniors got before then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich demanded the free ride
\nprogram in return for signing off on a sales tax increase to bail out
\nthe bus and rail agencies two years ago.<\/p>\n

Senate President John Cullerton of Chicago was the only Democrat to vote for the legislation.
<\/br>
<\/br>\u201cWe had a caucus on this we spent a lot of time on it. The caucus was divided," Cullerton said. "It was very emotional for some people, and I\u2019m in favor of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Ray Long at 3:35 p.m. SPRINGFIELD — A push to eliminate free local bus and train rides to all but low-income senior citizens failed today in the Illinois Senate. Under the bill, senior citizens 65 and older would have keep riding for free only if they qualified for the state’s circuit breaker program. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}