THE RIDE OF THE DEAD

On June 19, 2009, I posted a blog,” There’s A New Better Government Sheriff In Town,” about Andy Shaw being named Executive Director of the Better Government Association (BGA.) I wrote then, “Daniel Burnham said, ‘Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood.’ Andy is making big plans for The BGA that will hopefully stir men’s blood.” It is now 18 months later and he has made many men’s’ blood boil-- including dead ones.

The latest BGA report, an investigation by Robert Herguth, is about a soon to be released government audit that found extensive abusive of the free CTA cards that are issued to seniors. I had written about the tax-payer subsidized transit cards program (October 14, 2009,“Seniors as Freddy the Freeloaders,”) but only for the angle on how the free transit ride cads should only be issued to senior citizens who are lower income. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the wealthy seniors. It never occurred to me that dead seniors would be using the cards also. But this is Chicago and the dead perform many deeds!

Herguth wrote on the BGA website (http://www.bettergov.org,) “The Regional Transportation Authority – which oversees the three agencies and is conducting the audit – isn’t pinning this on the supernatural. Instead, it seems once cardholders die, friends and relatives who are very much alive sometimes use their free-ride passes to illegally ride the system – or even sell them to make a buck, said RTA spokeswoman Diane Palmer.

And they’ve been getting away with it because, RTA officials acknowledged, the oversight hasn’t been great – with no mechanism to automatically deactivate cards once a holder passes away and no consistent method for confirming the identity of the riders carrying them.

The RTA audit aims to get a handle on the abuse, and find ways to stop it, RTA officials said. They also are likely to use the data to help justify ending the senior free-ride program, which was foisted on them two years ago by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in what many regarded as a "political stunt." (It’s already sucked at least $38 million in revenues from the cash-starved transit systems, a figure that does not take into account any abuses.)”

The BGA and Fox Chicago News conducted an investigation by having “two male reporters (ages 40 and 49) borrow the senior free-ride passes from their fathers to ride on CTA buses and trains, and a Pace bus, one day last week. (A 21-year-old intern for Fox also was able to board a CTA bus and an L train using one of the passes.) ‘It was ridiculously easy,’ Shaw said. ‘Nobody at the CTA or Pace so much as blinked an eye. We did this to prove a point. And, for the record, we will be reimbursing the agencies for the fares.’ “


Herguth also tells us that the RTA audit showed that "riding while dead,” occurred with the misuse of approximately 160 senior free-ride passes still being used after the registered cardholder died. Those passes were used anywhere from a few times to 1,400 times after the death, officials said.

RTA spokeswoman Diane Palmer said the agency reviewed about 400,000 senior free-ride cards and found 3,000 users had died. Don’t you think the conductors would have noticed the riders were skeletons?

So does the CTA takes away fare cards that are being misused? A friend told me that when she was sitting on a bus the other day, a young man entered the bus and attempted to scan his card at the fare box. The driver noticed that the scan showed zero, meaning it was a senior fare free card. He told the passenger that he was not a senior and could not use that card. The driver did NOT confiscate the card and the errant passenger got off the bus--illegal senior card still in hand.


In 2009, Shaw wrote,” This is my dream and my passion. After a long career in the news business, and a lifetime in Cook County, I know how the system works or doesn’t work, I know what's broken, I know where the bodies are buried, and I have a serious plan to fix it. But there won’t be any witch hunts or personal attacks---this is not about “gotcha,” it’s about good government. I've never been more excited about a challenge or an opportunity. But I need an army of supporters or I'll be tilting at windmills. Don Quixote was charming, but General Patton won the battle.”

We all need to enlist in the army of the BGA and become its foot soldiers. No uniform need to be worn, honesty is the only requirement for service.