Now this crap comes up in a main stream publication? After Shortshanks is all set to leave office?
Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel and some newly-elected aldermen say they are prepared to overhaul and rein in the city’s Tax Increment Financing system, which they say has grown into a tax-gobbling menace over the last 25 years.
“Over the years, it’s kind of morphed from a tool for blighted economic communities into an all-purpose vehicle,” Emanuel told the Sun-Times. “We need to return it to its original purpose — it should not be used for high-rent areas.”
Emanuel is not prepared to abolish the program, as some of the aldermanic candidates who ran anti-TIF campaigns would like, but he pledged to appoint a commission to recommend reforms and say which TIFs should end.
- The 160 districts that now cover nearly a third of the city collect $500 million a year in property taxes that go into a quietly administered program run by Daley’s Planning Dept.
$500 million? That's enough to cover the budget shortfalls, isn't it? Amazing how that works out. It would appear that city government has plenty of money - they just don't know how to spend it.
Ben Joravsky from The Reader has to be shaking his head after covering this for years.
Ben Joravsky from The Reader has to be shaking his head after covering this for years.