A defiant CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. on Thursday lashed out at City Council members demanding his ouster, calling it part of Chicago’s sordid “history of attacking and trying to bring down” African American leaders.
Carter said he has “done what I need to do” to improve the CTA, bolster hiring and ridership decimated by COVID-19 and restore service to pre-pandemic levels, while ignoring “opportunities to go elsewhere” and earn more than his $376,000 CTA salary.
In exchange for that dedication and commitment to an agency he has served for much of his lifelong career in mass transit, Carter said, he has become a target.
More than half the Council — 29 out of 50 members — have signed on to a nonbinding resolution demanding that the embattled CTA president either resign or be fired by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
They’re joining Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who appoints three of the CTA’s seven board members, in demanding a leadership change before the Illinois General Assembly will even consider giving the four Chicago area mass transit agencies — CTA, Metra, Pace and the Regional Transportation Authority — the money to avert a $730 million fiscal cliff.
“When I sit here in front of a City Council that has been given an ordinance basically calling for me to be fired, there are a lot of things that go through my mind. Some of them are not very pleasant. … You ask yourself, ‘What did I do to warrant being singled out to be fired?” Carter said.
“As an African American man, this city has a history of attacking and trying to bring down their African American leaders. I know that because I’ve been here and I’ve seen it. ... What I would hope is that we would work together to find a way to support our agency and make our agency better,” he said.
Carter’s comments did not sit well with some of the Council members leading the charge for his ouster.
Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said he understands Carter’s “frustration” at becoming a political pin cushion. But Waguespack said that doesn’t excuse the defiant, combative tone Carter struck at Thursday’s hearing, his second this year.
The Council began mandating Carter’s quarterly appearances in 2022 after being infuriated when Carter repeatedly refused to show up, sending underlings instead.
“We’re all accountable for the actions that we take or we don’t take. And we don’t make excuses about trying to make corrections, trying to examine what we’ve done wrong. ... We try to move forward,” Waguespack said.
Harassment, threats and epithets
Carter said he believes he has “done what I need to do to deserve the respect that should come with the position that I’m in.”
The fact that he doesn’t get it while heads of Metra, Pace and the RTA get a pass, he said, is infuriating.
“Over the course of the last year, I’ve had to deal with harassment, with personal physical threats, with racial epithets that have all been directed at me because I have been turned into a caricature. I have been turned into something that is less than a human being,” he said.
“ It makes me worry about the personal safety of myself as well as the personal safety of my family,” he added.
“No public official should have to go through that. There are people who think it’s a joke. … There’s nothing funny about what I’ve been experiencing.”
Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) joined Waguespack and others in pushing back on Carter’s statements.
“I feel a little disappointed in your approach,” Fuentes said. “When we assume responsibility for a district or an agency, that comes with criticism.”
But she quickly added, “No official should ever have to worry about their own safety or the safety of their family. And I apologize that that has happened to you.”
Waguespack told Carter he was “a little taken aback by your approach here today,” and his colleagues and CTA riders probably feel the same.
“I don’t think we’ve been pushing too hard over the last few years to do much more than figure out what’s going on with the system and how do we hold all the people in the system — not making it personal, not one person, but the whole system — accountable for how it works or doesn’t work.”
Fair to criticize poor service, Vasquez says
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), prime mover behind the demand for Carter’s ouster, said Council members know how it feels to be attacked and, “as people of color, it does feel a certain kind of way being on the receiving end.”
But Vasquez also noted that of the 29 members backing the dump-Carter resolution, “20 were people of color and six were members of the Black Caucus.”
“That’s not exactly Council Wars,” he said. “What largely drove the conversation was the lack of results and the response we have been getting,” Vasquez added. “When we look at who makes the most complaints, per your survey, it’s the South Side of town.”
Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) said the buses he and his family ride daily are “always clean” and they “always feel safe.”
“If I have ever implicitly or explicitly criticized the performance of your agency or your job performance on the grounds of race, I would apologize for that and am willing to be held accountable for that,” La Spata said.
Ald. Nick Sposato (38th) called himself a “praise-in-public, scold-in-private kind of guy” who doesn’t need to “embarrass somebody in public to make myself look good.”
Still, “I am troubled by the way you started off today, President Carter, and the fact you think you’re being attacked [because of] the color of your skin,” Sposato said, noting that “I’m one of the 21" who did not demand Carter’s ouster.
“I can assure you, while I don’t agree with the way they did it, that you are not being attacked because of the color of your skin. ”
Red Line extension crucial, personal
Carter played the race card at the start of Thursday’s four-hour hearing.
He talked about growing up on the South Side and experiencing the “racial undertones” of this deeply divided city during the 1960s.
Carter recalled having to take a bus to visit cousins at Mendel Catholic High School on 111th Street because the CTA’s Red Line stops at 95th Street.
“It’s one of the reasons why the Red Line extension is so important to me personally,” he said.
Ald. David Moore (17th) credited Carter with using his formidable contacts from his time as a Washington bureaucrat to secure funding for that extension, adding that it would be foolish to “give that up” by dumping Carter.
Ald. Stephanie Coleman (16th) offered the most emotional defense of Carter.
“I appreciate your honesty, your humility and your courage of staying with the agency,” Coleman said, noting that what some call “accountability ... has actually been mean-spirited and lacks respect for leadership.”
Hispanics now leading the Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Park District, she noted, seem to have escaped criticism.
“We’re not calling for Pedro’s resignation,” she said, referring to CPS Supt. Pedro Martinez. “When I look at the Chicago Park District and the lack of lifeguards and the deplorable conditions of our field houses, we’re not calling for [Supt. Rosa Escareno’s] resignation.”
But at the CTA, “in spite of a global pandemic, you have still brought $2 billion to the agency. You still found a way not to let go or fire any of the 85%-Black workforce. ... So thank you, President Carter, for your leadership.”
Transportation Committee Chair Greg Mitchell (7th) closed the quarterly hearing with a pat on the back.
“You referred to it as addressing the `elephant in the room,’” Mitchell said. “It needed to be addressed. And you certainly did that.”
