TIF Solutions

At our March 13, 2008 meeting Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley outlined a list of reforms for the Tax Increment Finance Program. About the TIF program.

Major structural problems with the TIF program:

(1) Lack of transparency and accountability. No city in America keeps an annual revenue stream of $500 billion (and growing) off its books and unavailable for analysis. We have 158 TIF districts in the city alone. 40% of the city’s land is subject to TIF revenue taking. We simply don’t know where the money is going and who is benefiting from this fund. Too often it appears that private interests are receiving unwarranted gifts of public funds. Your own tax bill is lying to you because it doen’t show the negative impacts of TIFs on the schools, health care system, libraries or parks. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Mayor Daley’s own tax bill is lying to him!

(2) Our city is in extremely poor financial health and this program obscures our understanding the true picture of the city’s finances. Our city has one of the highest, if not the highest, per-capita debt ratio of any major U.S. city. The TIF program starves the operating branches of the city in order to swell the coffers of a fund that is OFF THE BOOKS and accountable to only one person – the mayor.

(3) This program illustrates and exacerbates the decline of democracy in the city of Chicago. We have a very popular mayor at the present time. This mayor – and any Chicago mayor – has extraordinary power to appoint the head of the school system, the CTA, the CHA and the Community Development Commission. There is no room for independent analysis. dissent or grassroots participation. The TIF program is like spackle that painters apply to cover up mistakes or cracks. The mayor has hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal to throw at any patronage-laden program, corrupt project or poorly managed construction initiative.

 

SOLUTIONS

*Sign our new online petition for TIF reform*

(1) STATE/COUNTY REFORM

State Representative John Fritchey is sponsoring HB 4815 to put TIF information on our tax bills. Tell your state representatives to support this bill.

(2) CITY REFORM

Tell your alderman to support the reform legislation being developed by Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley. This legislation should mandate…

- Run the TIF funds through the City and County budgets.

- Put the impact of TIFs on the annual property tax bills all citizens receive.

- Require TIF plans to be published with goals and budgets.

- Analyze TIFs for impact and effectiveness. Shut down TIF districts that do not comply with guidelines or whose purpose is contrary to the original intent of stemming blight that has no other source of funding remediation.

- Publish maps and data about the TIF program online and in forms that can be captured by the public easily.

- Require impact analysis of TIFs on other units of local government.

- Allow inflation rates to be factored into calculating the rising value of property in and therefor the flow of funds from all TIF districts.

- Closely regulate the “porting” of funds from one TIF district to another by some numeric or percentage basis.

- Abolish the Chicago Community Development Commission, which is simply an extension of the office of the mayor, and replace it with an independent body with significant community representation.

REMEMBER, IT’S YOUR MONEY!