A southbound CTA Red Line train is pictured in a file photo. (WTTW News)
A key Chicago City Council panel advanced the nominations of five Chicagoans picked by Mayor Brandon Johnson to serve on the board of the Regional Transportation Authority, which is facing a a $730 million deficit in 2026.
The endorsement of the city’s Transportation and Public Way Committee sends the nominations of Natasha Jenkins, Thomas Kotarac, Jarixon Medina, Dennis J. Mondero and Nora Cay Ryan to the full Chicago City Council for confirmation. That vote could come as soon as Wednesday.
If confirmed, the five nominees would represent Chicago on the 16-member board for five years. Board members earn $25,000 annually and meet once per month.
The RTA board will be asked to address that massive budget gap, which has sparked proposals to merge the Chicago area’s three separate public transit agencies — the CTA, suburban bus system Pace and commuter rail system Metra — into a single agency.
Without a solution to the fiscal crisis facing Chicago-area transit by the end of June, agencies will have no choice but to start planning for service cuts of up to 40%, officials said.
Johnson made the nominations nearly six months after his first pick to serve on the RTA Board failed to be confirmed by members of the City Council, who are under increasing pressure to make significant changes to the Chicago Transit Authority, which has yet to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the Rev. Ira Acree, the politically connected pastor of the Greater St. John Baptist Church on the West Side, won the endorsement of the Transportation Committee to serve on the RTA board, he withdrew his nomination after a tense hearing.
Acree, who had no transit-related experience, rejected accusations that he was unqualified for the position and said he was not confirmed because he angered “opponents of African American empowerment.”
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th Ward) said he was frustrated that the mayor used a parliamentary maneuver to introduce the nominations directly to the Transportation Committee, rather than following the normal procedure of introducing them at a full City Council meeting.
That would have allowed alderpeople to consider their qualifications for several weeks, instead of just two days, said Vasquez, a member of the Progressive Caucus who has become a frequent critic of Johnson.
Medina, the pastor of New Life Covenant Church’s Spanish Campus in Humboldt Park, faced many of the same questions as Acree and encountered much of the same opposition. Medina was born in Puerto Rico before moving to Michigan and then Chicago, according to an online biography.
Alds. Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward) and Greg Mitchell (7th Ward) joined Vasquez is voting to reject his nomination.
The mayor’s other picks got a much warmer reception, and their nominations were advanced unanimously.
Jenkins, a Black woman, is a labor and employment law attorney who told the committee about taking the CTA from the West Side to her high school on the North Side every day.
Kotarac, a White man, is the senior vice president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and leads the group’s transportation and infrastructure work. The former deputy executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Kotarac also served as an aide to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and former U.S. Rep Luis Guiterrez.
Mondero, the son of immigrants from the Philippines, is the executive director of the Chinese Mutual Aid Association. As the chief administrative officer for the CTA, he invented the “train tracker” system used by commuters.
Ryan, a White woman, is the chief of staff to Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter Jr., and was selected in 2023 to participate in the Edgar Fellow program, an executive leadership program run by former Gov. Jim Edgar.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
