Entries associated with the tag "Tax Increment Financing":

Yesterday Mayor Daley held a press conference to announce that help was on the way for the city's poor beleaguered residential property tax payers.

He was going to have the Cook County Board of Review extend the deadline for filing tax assessment appeals. You now have until March 31 to appeal.

Pardon me for being unappreciative, but: thanks for nothing, Mr. Mayor.

I know these things get complicated, so I'll be brief. The most important element in determining how much we pay in property taxes is the levy -- that is, the amount of property tax dollars Mayor Daley wants to spend. Our levy keeps rising because Daley keeps spending more and more money every year thanks to TIFs, the mayor's favorite tax boondoggle.

The mayor either doesn't realize this or doesn't want to admit it. So when the public cries for tax relief, he proposes to tinker with the assessment -- the one part of the taxpaying process he should have nothing to do with. As faithful readers ought to know by now, your property tax bill is basically determined by multiplying the amount your property is valued at (i.e., its assessment)  by the tax rate. If the board of review lowers your assessment, will you pay less in taxes? Absolutely. But the overall amount of property taxes that Mayor Daley's government -- and, let's face it, he controls all aspects of local government -- will remain the same. So the burden of payment will shift from those who know how to play the tax-appeals game to those who don't.

Who generally applies for assessment cuts? Commercial property owners who have the savvy to hire sharp, clout-heavy lawyers who know enough to contribute campaign dollars to the three members of the board of review.

So the mayor's great reform proposal means that the sharpies will get a break and everyone else -- the usual collection of suckers and saps -- will pick up the slack. In the name of cutting our taxes, the mayor will be raising them. And all so he can win some headlines in his ongoing PR campaign to convince the public that he truly cares about taxing them out of their homes.

Please, Mr. Mayor -- no more property tax relief. The taxpayers can't afford it. 

The city announced today that it's facing a $217 million budget shortfall and might have to raise taxes in the coming year.

Big surprise.

As you may recall from last year's tutorial on taxes, budgets are projections. Each year Mayor Daley predicts how much money he expects to generate in taxes and fees and how much money he expects to spend. If the latter is greater than the former, he has to raise taxes to make up a deficit. If not, taxes remain flat.

Last year at about this time, Daley was gushing that his managerial expertise had left the city flush and there would be no need to raise taxes. On the campaign trail last fall he announced that the city was facing a $65 million shortfall, the lowest in five years. Now he's saying the economy was worse than expected, with the real estate market sagging--hence the huge deficit.

I don't think the economy's the big difference. The difference is that Daley was running for reelection last year and this year he's not. Think of the increases in taxes and fees as Daley's way of saying thanks for your vote, suckers.

And the city did hit you with tax increases last year--they just didn't tell you about it. I know, I know, in today's article about the looming deficit, the Trib claimed that "taxpayers escaped any increase a year ago."

I don't know why, but the big papers aren't telling you the whole story about your property taxes. Every time the city creates a tax increment financing district it effectively raise your property taxes, as the other taxing bodies raise their tax rates to compensate for the loss of revenue. There are now 153 TIFs in Chicago, diverting over $400 million a year in property taxes. And the city keeps creating new TIFs almost every month. TIFs feed the slush fund the city uses to line the pockets of the mayor's developer friends.

In a month or two the second-installment property tax bill will come out, and scores of home owners on the west and south sides will get clobbered with tax hikes approaching 100 percent. In addition, the soaring taxes will make communities like Washington Park, Woodlawn, Garfield Park, and Lawndale unaffordable for poor or working-class people who might want to live there.

The only mystery is who Daley will blame for the coming tax hike. I predict he'll blame an economic downturn, Cook County assessor Jim Houlihan for the high assessments, and the general assembly for not giving him more money for the schools. I guarantee he won't say a word about the TIFs.

Next Wednesday, Cook County Board commissioner Mike Quigley is taking his TIF act on the road, heading off to Springfield to address a private meeting of legislators, legislative aides, and gubernatorial advisers.

"I talked to the governor's office and they said, 'Leadership wants you to come to Springfield and talk about tax increment financing,'" says Quigley. "I assume that means the speaker [Michael Madigan], the senate president [Emil Jones] and the governor [Rod Blagojevich] will have people there. But I really don't know."

Quigley, who commissioned a report (PDF) critical of Mayor Daley's TIF program, is being intentionally circumspect about his role in the ongoing behind-the-scenes struggle between the state's most powerful elected officials. Here's what going on.

For the last several years Blagojevich has held his tongue while Daley and schools CEO Arne Duncan rip the state for not providing more money for Chicago's public schoools.

It hasn't been easy for Blagojevich to remain silent. As gubernatorial insiders have explained it to me, they're all for giving more money to Chicago's public schools, but they find it hard to call for more state funding knowing how CPS suckers the state for the money it already gets. It's complicated, as most TIF matters are, but the bottom line is that it's a schools scam: for roughly every property tax dollar the schools divert to the TIF districts, the state gives them about 70 cents in educational assistance. Effectively, Daley and Duncan are manipulating the state's goofy education-funding system to divert money intended for schoolchildren to TIF deals -- like the $58 million handout they're ready to give developers to build an 18-story tower on top of Union Station.

Up until now Blagojevich has stayed away from TIFs, allowing Daley to freely spend the money. But apparently this last session was the last straw. Not only did Daley not support Blagojevich's ill-fated business tax, he embarrassed the governor by sending Duncan and busloads of schoolchildren to Springfield to call for more state education funding.

As a result our governor has evidently decided to send Daley a message: Mess with me and I'll mess with your TIFs. Over the last few weeks Blago's aides have been contacting Quigley, no fan of the mayor's, to pick his brain on the TIF scam. Now they've quietly let everyone (particularly Daley aides) know that they're inviting Quigley to Springfield.

Among the many things that Quigley intends to talk about is the Central Loop TIF, a $100-million-dollar-year boondoggle that funds development in an area where developers don't need incentives. Created in 1983, it's supposed to expire this year. But Daley's been asking the state to extend it for another 12. According to statehouse sources, Daley and Madigan recently struck a deal on the TIF: Daley agreed to support Madigan's watered-down home owner's property tax exemption in exchange for the speaker's support for an extension.

Blagojevich has the power to cut off Daley's TIF slush fund. He could hold hearings on the program. He could oppose extending the Central Loop TIF. What's at stake for the mayor? The Olympics, for one thing. As folks in Springfield will tell you, Daley's looking to use the TIFs to pay for his games. If the state threatens to plug up his money pipeline, he'll have to figure some other way to pay for them.

Quigley says he understands there are larger issues at play. "I don't have any expectations about any of this," he says. "They asked me to talk about TIFs, and that's what I'll talk about."

Could it be that the city's stealing my ideas?

In the March 16 Reader I predicted that the mayor would try to finance a large chunk of the Olympics with property taxes taken from several tax increment financing districts, noting that there was one ripe for the creating in the rapidly developing stretch along Vincennes and King Drive between 41st and 35th.

Sure enough, at a Tuesday meeting of the Community Development Commission meeting (the appointed body that's supposed to oversee TIFs), the CDC recommended approval of the so-called Pershing/King TIF district, which would run roughly between 39th and 41st and King and Vincennes. Lame-duck alderman Dorothy Tillman endorsed the TIF without giving any indication of exactly how the money would be spent.

After the meeting I called her successor in the Third Ward, alderman-elect Pat Dowell. Dowell said she wasn't sure what the TIF was intended to fund, but she didn't think it had anything to do with the Olympics--it's been in the works for a while, she said. I asked whether she'd support the TIF when it came before the City Council, and she said she'd have to look into what residents thought before making that decision.

The City Council generally follows the CDC's lead when it comes to TIF proposals. But then the CDC's generally following the local alderman's lead when it makes its recommendations -- in effect, one body rubber-stamps the other. So this TIF proposal presents us with an interesting situation. If Dowell comes out against the Pershing/King TIF, will the City Council side with her and override the CDC? Or will it follow the CDC, effectively taking the side of an ousted alderman?

You know which way I'm leaning.