TIF District Policy Becomes Issue in Chicago Mayoral Race

With the Chicago Mayoral race heating up, so too is talk about the City’s $500M annual Tax Increment Financing (TIF) revenues.  Former Chief of Staff to President Obama, Rham Emanuel recently gave a call to former Alderman and now U.S. Congressman Mike Quigley in regards to Chicago’s TIF districts. Recently, two Cook County Board President candidates,...

With the Chicago Mayoral race heating up, so too is talk about the City’s $500M annual Tax Increment Financing (TIF) revenues. 

Former Chief of Staff to President Obama, Rham Emanuel recently gave a call to former Alderman and now U.S. Congressman Mike Quigley in regards to Chicago’s TIF districts.

Recently, two Cook County Board President candidates, Roger Keats and Tom Tresser, issued a joint statement vowing “to fight to eliminate all TIFs” and “oppose any new TIFs in Cook County.”

A Chicago Reader article highlights how TIF districts is starting to become a campaign issue in the City of Chicago, but warns of the allure of the ability to control large sums of money with little or no transparency, accountability, or public scrutiny.

“Like Quigley figured out six years ago, the TIF program in Chicago is unfair, deceitful, wasteful, and costly. But it gives the mayor about $500 million a year in property taxes to play with. Money is power. The more tax dollars a mayor controls, the more political power he or she has. It’s a lesson Mayor Daley learned early on and never forgot.” 

Stay tuned for Kate Piercy’s new TIF district report “Hidden in Plain Site”, which will be released on Thursday October 7th. It’s an update of her previous TIF district report, “Time to Throw a TIF: Invisible, Unaccountable Taxes You’ve Never Heard of.”