A CTA Purple Line train is pictured in a file photo. (Albert Pego / iStock)

The Chicago City Council confirmed four of the five Chicagoans picked by Mayor Brandon Johnson to serve on the board of the Regional Transportation Authority, which is facing a $730 million deficit in 2026.

Natasha Jenkins, Thomas Kotarac, Dennis J. Mondero and Nora Cay Ryan were confirmed unanimously by the City Council. They will represent Chicago on the 16-member RTA board for five years. Board members earn $25,000 annually and meet once per month.

But the City Council voted 18-25 to reject the nomination of Jarixon Medina, who is now the second of Johnson’s picks to serve on the RTA to fail to be confirmed by the City Council.

Medina, the pastor of New Life Covenant Church’s Spanish Campus in Humboldt Park, told a City Council committee that he does not rely on the CTA, but has two cars. He also did not directly answer questions about the financial crisis facing Chicago’s public transportation system.

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 tapped a new slate of nominees 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.”

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]