>> When Chicago's transit system facing a 730 million dollar budget gap, state lawmakers have been holding a series of hearings on the future of public transportation, how to fund it and how it should be managed.

Earlier today, the Senate Transportation Committee met for the last of those hearings for now and expanded their focus to look at the importance of transit around Illinois, but they still spent plenty of time debating the hot topic in transit land whether to merge the CTA, Metra and pace as some lawmakers and advocates are proposing W t Tw News reporter Nick Lambert has been following this issue and joins us live from Springfield.

Nick.

>> Well, Grande is this idea of a transit merger has been floating around for more than a year.

Lawmakers asked the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to come up with ideas to reform the region's transit system ridership is still off of its pre-covid peak and federal relief money.

Plugging that gap is only expected to last through the end of the year.

Now, one of the ideas that seem at came up with was to merge the 3 Chicagoland transit agencies and to funnel in a billion and a half extra dollars of funding from the state annually.

State Senator Ron believe and some of his colleagues have taken up that idea sponsoring legislation that aligns with the maps merger proposal.

The refrain you often hear from folks is no funding without reform.

>> And believe also chairs.

The state transportation of the Senate, rather Transportation Committee, which had 6 hearings on the topic.

The final one was today, though, he said this is a weedy an important issue.

So it's likely this really be the last hearing on the matter now, as we've reported CTA, Metra Pace, the regional Transportation Authority, they've all been pushing back against this idea of a merger.

So have quite a few suburban lawmakers.

They're concerned about losing representation right now.

Many county chairs can appoint one person each to the metro piece, an RTA boards under this new merged Metropolitan Mobility Authority.

Big get just one appointment each.

Now Illinois Municipal League's John Cota said it's not just about representation.

It's also about money.

Legacy, financial obligations or debt.

>> Including CTA, pension liabilities should not be passed on to other constituent groups.

This would result in significant increases in pension The other boards of CTA is combined of them in this fashion, a less drastic approach to governance reforms should be considered.

>> Nick, you mentioned that this hearing look at the issue of transit statewide Woodley here.

>> That's right.

We heard from public transportation leaders around Illinois now to be sure a lot of the systems are fairly different from those serving the Chicago area.

We heard from folks who work mostly in rural communities are primarily with on-demand rides, but they're still facing similar challenge is that Chicago area agencies are working to draw back passengers responding to changing travel patterns or kinds of riders.

Those are concerned about getting enough state funding to provide the services that they want to even expand that service.

Some of them say they're worried if there's a big restructuring of Chicagoland transit and a huge influx of cash to the Chicago area.

>> other parts of the state might lose out.

>> Our state's history providing critical financial support to the public transit statewide.

The only constitution establishes access to public transportations, essential service in our state as we partnered with our communities.

We dinner implemented programs such as free rides for veterans in our community.

Free rides for K through 12 in our community on effort to reduce the gaps and barriers to opportunities, whether it be employment or education.

But that comes with a cost.

>> Now the theme of today's hearing was that funding transit is a statewide priority.

Lawmaker said they don't want that funding to be a 0 sum game.

The Assembly is expected to take up this issue of Chicagoland transit in its spring session.

That will be a huge question of governments as well as funding.

Will talk more about that in just a bit.

Friend us.

>> Nic, thanks.

We'll see soon for spotlight.

And you can