June 17, 2025

City Club event description:

Chicago area transit agencies face a $770 million fiscal cliff after lawmakers ended the spring session without a funding solution. With major service cuts on the table and structural reform proposals still in flux, the future of public transit hangs in the balance. Join leading voices for a candid discussion on what’s next for funding, governance, and the riders who depend on these systems every day.

Speakers

Donald P. DeWitte
Donald P. DeWitte is an Illinois State Senator for the 33rd Senate District. He has served in this role since his appointment in September 2018, and subsequent election in November 2018.

He currently serves as the Minority Spokesperson for the Senate Transportation and Senate Revenue Committees, and as a member of the Appropriations, Education, Environment & Conservation, Labor, and State Government Committees. He also serves on the bipartisan Joint Commission on Administrative Rules (JCAR).

Don served as an Alderman for the City of St. Charles from 1993 thru 2005.

In 2005 he was elected Mayor, re-elected in 2009, and stepped down in 2013. Prior to his appointment to the IL Senate, Don was appointed to serve as a Director on the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) Board in Chicago representing Kane County from 2013 thru August of 2018.

Jacky Grimshaw
Jacky joined CNT in 1992, and has since developed its capacity to engage in public policy advocacy and transportation planning, transportation research, environmental justice, public participation tool development, GIS mapping, community economic development and air quality. Jacky advocates for and provides expertise to increase transit in the Chicago region. She created and led CNT’s transportation and air quality programs and led CNT’s Transit Future campaign in the fight for mass transit reform and dedicated funding in the Chicago region. Since 2005, she has led CNT’s policy efforts at all levels of government.

Jacky has served on numerous boards, including: Chicago Transit Authority, National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board’s Environmental Justice and Public Involvement Committees. She has just completed terms on the Women’s Issues in Transportation Committee. 

Prior to CNT, Jacky spent time as a researcher in hematology and gastroenterology, in both state and federal government, in the Chicago Public School district and served in numerous other capacities, including political advisor for the late Mayor Harold Washington and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Jacky has completed the Master of Arts in Public Policy requirements at Governors State University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Marquette University in Milwaukee.

City Club video

State Rep. Kam Buckner
Kam Buckner serves as Speaker Pro Tempore of the Illinois House of Representatives and is a key budget negotiator for the Illinois House, helping shape the state’s $55 billion budget. A proud native of Chicago’s South Side, he is the son of a law enforcement officer and a Chicago Public Schools teacher.

Since 2019, Kam has had the honor of representing the 26th Legislative District, which spans some of Chicago’s most iconic neighborhoods, including South Shore, Hyde Park, Bronzeville, Downtown, River North, and the Gold Coast. Over the course of his tenure, he has taken on leadership roles as House Black Caucus Chair, Majority Whip, Assistant Majority Leader, and now Speaker Pro Tempore.

Kam serves on several key committees, including Judiciary and Revenue, and is the founding Chair of the Lakeshore Caucus, a bipartisan, bicameral group focused on protecting Lake Michigan and tackling critical environmental issues. He played a pivotal role in securing an elected representative school board for Chicago and was a chief negotiator on the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act—one of the most ambitious clean energy laws in U.S. history. Kam also made history as the first legislator in the Midwest to pass a law banning untraceable ghost guns.

Beyond the legislature, Kam has dedicated his career to public service and community impact. He previously led World Sport Chicago, serving more than 20,000 young people across the city, and worked in Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs front office. His experience spans government at multiple levels, having served on the staffs of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin.

A passionate advocate for education, Kam has taught Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He holds a B.A. from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from DePaul University. Today, he lives in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood with his wife and children, continuing to fight for a stronger, more equitable future.

David Greising
David Greising is the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, joining the BGA in 2018. For 100 years, the BGA has fought for honest, equitable and effective government through investigative journalism and policy advocacy. Under Greising’s leadership,  the BGA won its first Pulitzer Prize, for local reporting, in 2022.

Greising’s career started at the City News Bureau of Chicago, with stops at the Chicago Sun-Times, Business Week magazine, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters, where he was Midwest bureau chief. He was a co-founder of the Chicago News Cooperative and worked briefly as a consultant to World Business Chicago. A former business columnist for the Tribune, Greising today writes on government issues in regular opinion columns for the paper.

Greising has fostered transformative change at the BGA. In 2022, the organization launched an innovative strategy including a major commitment to solutions-focused reporting, establishment of a statewide network of investigative and solutions reporters and the launch of two new websites: Illinois Answers Project and BGA Policy.

The BGA won its Pulitzer for reporting about City of Chicago negligence that led to 61 fire deaths over a five-year period. The BGA’s policy team in 2022 drafted a Chicago ethics reform program that was passed into law and is a leader of the pension reform effort in Illinois.

A graduate of DePauw University, Greising with his wife Cynthia Hedges Greising are parents to three adult children and residents of Evanston, Illinois.