IL: CTA board vacancy an opportunity for Mayor Brandon Johnson before he loses mayoral control of transit agency

A vacancy on the CTA’s board of directors could give Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson a chance to exert some control over the transit agency’s future — months before control over the CTA’s board is wrested away from the mayor for good. 

Michele Lee, a disability advocate who was appointed to the CTA board by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2022, is leaving the board. 

Lee told the Tribune on Tuesday that she was stepping down because she had moved outside of the CTA’s service area — to Scottsdale, Arizona. The CTA’s website noted there was a mayoral vacancy on the board. 

Lee’s departure presents an opportunity for Johnson to exert some mayoral control over the transit agency before governance reforms mandated by the state’s new transit funding legislation take effect in the middle of next year. 

Crucially, an additional ally on the CTA board could help Johnson secure enough votes to install a pick of his choice to head the agency, which has been operating without a permanent leader for almost a year following the departure of embattled former President Dorval Carter.

Historically, the Chicago mayor has selected a pick for CTA president who is then approved by vote of the agency’s board. 

Currently, the CTA board is staffed by four mayoral appointees and three gubernatorial appointees. But under the new paradigm mandated by the state legislature, the mayor will get three board picks while the governor and Cook County Board president will each get two — effectively taking away the mayor’s majority control of the board. 

The legislation also requires that the board of the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority oversight body give its “advice and consent” for any CTA president appointment, and that NITA’s executive director and the chair of its board be included in the search process, further diluting the mayor’s control over the agency’s leadership. Only a quarter of the new NITA board members will be appointed by Chicago’s mayor. 

Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for Johnson, did not respond to a question about whether the mayor had an appointment in mind for the vacant board seat. 

The mayor’s office could feel some pressure to appoint a representative for the disability community to the vacancy left by Lee, a disability rights advocate and herself a wheelchair user. 

Lee told the Tribune that she loved Chicago and the CTA — but that it was easier for her to get around in Scottsdale, where snowy sidewalks don’t keep her trapped in her apartment after bad bouts of winter weather. 

Earlier this year, Lee became a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the city, alleging it has failed to keep sidewalks and curb ramps accessible to people with disabilities. 

She said she hoped her replacement on the CTA board would be a member of the disability community, a regular CTA rider and someone who would advocate for accessibility issues on the system.  

In a statement provided by a spokesperson, CTA board Chair Lester Barclay praised Lee, saying she had “helped steer the CTA towards its goal of becoming fully accessible by 2040, while also shedding light on the importance of finding ways to make public transit a more welcoming space for those with disabilities.”

“We look forward to carrying on the vital work she championed,” Barclay said.

The mayor’s office also did not say when or whether Johnson planned to finally nominate a permanent leader to helm the agency, which is led on an interim basis by Nora Leerhsen, Carter’s former chief of staff. 

Leerhsen has become popular with local transit advocates, but she so far has not received a nod from the mayor’s office to take on the top job on a permanent basis. 

Though it presents an opening for the mayor, the newly vacant board seat is no guarantee Johnson will get his way when it comes to permanent CTA leadership. 

All current CTA board members’ terms — including any person Johnson appoints to fill the Lee vacancy — will expire in September, soon after the new transit bill takes effect, assuming it is signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker. Board members will then need to be reappointed in accordance with the new state requirements.

But before they lose their jobs, the existing CTA board could approve a mayoral nominee for CTA head. That executive would not automatically lose their job when the transit legislation takes effect, confirmed state Sen. Ram Villivalam, a Democrat from Chicago who was one of the key architects of the legislation. 

The board could, however, choose to appoint someone else, according to Villivalam. 

Even under the current paradigm, Johnson has struggled to exert mayoral control over the CTA.

Until now, the mayor only had the chance to appoint two out of seven CTA board members. The other two mayoral appointees, including Lee, were Lightfoot’s picks. 

Furthermore, Johnson’s own appointees have not always followed his lead: One of them, Roberto Requejo, was among the board members who appeared to rebuff the mayor’s attempt earlier this year to install his former chief operating officer, John Roberson, as CTA president. 

Johnson, under pressure from transit advocates who were calling for a full national search for a new CTA leader, never took Roberson’s appointment to the CTA board for approval, a sign that he wasn’t confident he could get the appointment approved. 

The saga reached a boiling point when Ald. David Moore, 17th, showed up to a CTA board meeting to vouch for Roberson, his former chief of staff, and admonished members to “work with the mayor that put you here.” 

“Don’t be a backbiting snake,” Moore said. 

At the time, Lee was not among the board members who appeared to publicly push back against the plan to appoint Roberson. 

But when asked Tuesday if she would have voted to approve him, she said, “I’m glad it didn’t come to it.” 

Lee said she would support a national search for a new CTA leader that would include interim President Leerhsen. “I have a lot of confidence in her,” Lee said. 

And she said she didn’t feel it necessary for the mayor to rush a CTA leadership appointment through before the transit boards turn over next year. Doing so, she said “might create more unnecessary uncertainty” for the transit agency, which only recently emerged from the threat of a major looming fiscal crisis. 

For his part, Johnson has maintained that losing control over the CTA is a worthwhile price to pay in exchange for funding that saved it from catastrophic cuts. The new law that mandates governance reforms will also provide around $1.5 billion a year to save regional public transit from drastic cuts — and, ideally, help improve it. 

“I mean, I’m not a fascist. I don’t know what to tell you,” Johnson said in a sit-down with the Tribune this fall. “The most important thing is they have a system that’s funded. … I don’t sit around counting the status of how much power is concentrated in one seat.”

Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin contributed.

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