Entries associated with the tag "Chicago Tribune":

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Sam Zell. All the guy's doing is asking for a handout, the sort of thing Mayor Daley dishes out to developers all the time.

"The Trib's Selling and We're Not Buying," read the front page of today's Sun-Times. "Only Sam Zell and his Tribune Co., owners of the ballpark, stand to gain. And in an economic downturn, only the taxpayers stand to lose."

The headline and accompanying editorial -- which had me cheering over my morning coffee -- are referring to the state's proposal to use sales taxes to buy and rebuild Wrigley Field so whoever owns the Cubs can sell more tickets and concessions and make more money.

The paper's zeal is goosed by wanting to make things uncomfortable for its rival, of course, but it's an encouraging turn of events nevertheless. When it comes to corporate welfare, the Wrigley Field proposal is only the tip of the iceberg. In the last year or so, the city's agreed to fork over $8.5 million to Grossinger Auto Corp. to build a car dealership at North and Clybourn, $51 million to a consortium of developers to convert the old downtown post office into a luxury hotel and condos, $58 million to developers to build an 18-story tower on top of Union Station for another hotel and even more upscale condos, $5 million to Navteq, the hugely successful navigations technology company to move from the Merchandise Mart to 100 N. Riverside, and $880,000 to Barry Callebaut to move its corporate office into the old Montgomery Ward building at 600 W. Chicago. Callebaut, by the way, was the company that closed the Brach's candy factory, throwing roughly 3,500 west-siders out of work.

These are all, of course, just some of the more egregious handouts from various tax increment financing districts, the mayor's favorite slush fund. Whenever I talk to community groups about TIFs they want to know why the Tribune and the Sun-Times aren't writing about this scam. In private writers from both papers have told me that their editors basically think the issue's too complicated for their readers to understand.  

I think they're underestimating the public's intelligence. In fact, today's Sun-Times editorial did a great job of spelling it out in language that pretty much anyone can follow. In this case, they're writing about a diversion of sales taxes, but the same principle applies when the city diverts property taxes for TIF deals. 

"Sales taxes are intended as a source of general revenue to help cover the myriad costs of local government -- teaching children, paying police officers and fixing pot holes," the Sun-Times wrote. "When significant sales tax revenues are diverted to a single special purpose, such as paying for a ballpark, the tax burden grows that much heavier on everyone else."

I couldn't have said it better myself . . .

He's at it again.

In this week's Works, I wrote about a recent press conference where Mayor Daley denounced  the county assessor's office and called for widespread "corrections" to property tax assessments.

Now, in today's Tribune, there's an op-ed by the mayor that tells a few more whoppers about his role in our property tax system.

For starters, he claims that he "proposed the original plan that became the 7 percent cap on the taxable value of homes." Not only did Daley not propose the original plan (Cook County assessor Jim Houlihan did), he did very little of the lobbying needed for the watered-down version that passed.

But the big daddy of tall tales in his editorial is this one: "Even with the increase in Chicago property taxes in this year's budget, city property taxes have risen a average of only 1.5 percent a year since I've been mayor."

The only reason Daley can make this claim is because he's not counting hikes in school taxes and, more to the point, he doesn't regard TIFs as property taxes that residents have to pay. Instead, the mayor's official policy is that TIFs dollars are created by some sort of magical City Hall money-making machine at no expense to taxpayers.

But as Cook County clerk David Orr's TIF report makes clear, that's just not so. In 2004 Chicagoans paid $328 million in property taxes to the TIFs; in '05 the TIF property tax take went up to $386 million, and in '06 it rose to $500 million. I suspect the TIF tax surpassed $600 million in 2007, but we won't know for sure until Orr's office completes the official tally in the summer.

Once you factor in the TIFs you get a more realistic idea of why your property tax bill is rising. In 2005, taxpayers paid about $719 million in taxes to the city and another $386 million to the TIFs for a total of about $1.105 billion. In 2006, they paid about $736 to the city and $500 million to the TIFs, for a total of $1.236 billion. That's an $131 million increase, or 12 percent.

In time the amount of property taxes Mayor Daley collects through TIFs -- while claiming you're not really paying into them -- will exceed the amount he officially acknowledges you are paying. We'll be paying twice as much in property taxes as the city acknowledges we are.

It's one thing for Mayor Daley to dwell in a dream world where property taxes aren't really property taxes. But the rest of us still have to pay the bill.