The Daily Herald reports Elk Grove will rebate $300,000 yearly in excess revenue from the TIF to area school and park districts.

“Sometimes government entities have a tendency to extend (TIFs) or milk it,” Johnson said. “We want to use it for exactly what it was intended – to give a jolt to start an economically deprived area. We don’t want to make it into a cash cow.”

Elk Grove Village is the exception to the TIF rule. Chicagoans know TIFs in the city are almost never retired early as they can be used successfully as slush funds for aldermen and the mayor. In fact, Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader reported last week on Chicago’s “shadow budget” comprised of millions of dollars of TIF funds from throughout the city.

Chicago suburb Schaumburg could also learn from its neighbor Elk Grove. Liberty Leader Brian Costin used the news of Elk Grove’s TIF early retirement to highlight the massive corporate subsidies provided through the Old Schaumburg Center TIF district, which has cost taxpayers nearly $50 million since 1989. Now, the village is considering another $7 million in taxpayer resources for a private developer to build a subdivision.

Somehow I doubt those homes will be sold at a reduced cost to Schaumburg taxpayers.

From Jenkins’s press release:

In an effort to provide transparency and accountability to Illinois state government, a Cicero resident and Liberty Leader, David Jenkins, is asking people to visit a site where he’s posted information containing the office location, job title, and salary information for all Attorney General employees.

You can view the information–and download it for use in Excel–online at www.illinoisattorneygeneralemployees.com.

Thanks to generous tax increment financing (TIF) from the Village of Hoffman Estates and the bad management of a private developer, the 11,000-seat Sears Centre arena is going on the auction block, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

The Sears Centre snafu isn’t the first time Hoffman Estates taxpayers have financed private business development in their village.

Hoffman Estates jumped into the tax subsidies quagmire in 1989 when it helped Sears move 5,000 jobs out of Chicago to its current headquarters, largely through tax increment financing. Sears has received more than $200 million in TIF subsidies taken from schools and other local governments. To cover the lost tax money, local governments force others to pay more.

Our own Kate Campaigne Piercy has written about the lack of transparency and accountability of TIFs.

Isn’t it time to throw a TIF in Hoffman Estates?

The simple matter of it is, although the revisions to FOIA put a bit more bite in the law, local governments don’t need to stress about an onslaught of requests for public records. All they have to do is step into the 21st century and put their records online.

The paper writes:

For smaller governments without full-time staffs, such as Ringwood, the new law could mean added hardship, Village President Rick Mack said.

“It would put a tremendous burden on small municipalities like Ringwood with small staffs and budgets, but when Gov. Quinn signs the law, we will comply as we always have,” Mack said.

Why not put all financial records online so you don’t have to worry about making copies and using limited man hours? We have some tips on how you, as a municipality, school district or county can do that here.

Now it’s up to Governor Quinn to sign the bill–which would make a website listing all state expenditures online–into law.

Check out our timer on the right side of the Open Illinois homepage to see how long this important transparency legislation sits on the governor’s desk.

Read more on the Illinois Accountability Portal here.

In total, we’ve had 10 candidates for Palatine’s elected offices–the township, highways, school, park and library districts–sign on board with our clear and proactive Transparency Pledge. This is all due to the hard work of a Liberty Leader named Valerie I.

The Palatine candidates committing to a proactive policy of government transparency include:

Joe Gump (Candidate for Palatine Township Highway Commissioner), Jan Wood (Candidate for Palatine Township Trustee), Duncan Swenson (Candidate for Palatine Township Supervisor), Kevin O’Connell (Candidate for Palantine Township Clerk), Hal Snyder, M.D. (Candidate for Palatine Township Trustee), Elizabeth Marcin (Candidate for Palatine Township Trustee), Lige Dexter Stokes (Candidate for Palatine Park District Trustee), Vito Manola (Candidate for Palatine Mayor), Nancy Carlson (Candidate for President of Palatine District 15 School Board), and Robert Brunn (Candidate of Palatine Public Library District Trustee).

Kudos to each one of these Transparency Pledge signatories, Democrat and Republican alike.

Why do we ask candidates to sign on to our transparency pledge? We believe a commitment to being proactive in one’s support of government transparency sets the stage for pro-transparency legislation that will turn good ideas into law.

The transparency we seek is easy, quick to implement, good policy, and it doesn’t have to cost a penny. Small or large, it’s easy for any government body to become transparent. All you need is a website and 5 minutes to export your check register as an Excel or PDF file and you’re done. Any government body, whether it retains full- or part-time website employees, can spare a few minutes after every meeting to post this important information online.

We’re often asked why it’s important to post expenditures online regularly and not just at the end of the year. The answer is simple: Transparency is not an end unto itself, but a means by which citizens can become engaged in their local government. This engagement doesn’t happen at one time during the year–it’s a constant effort. Officials have a duty to share decisions about spending as soon as they happen so citizens can participate in the discussion and help to identify instances where their money could be spent better or savings could be had. If this is done at the end of the year, it’s really too late to realize savings or inefficiencies.

As the April 7th elections approach, we’ll continue to post new signatories to our Transparency Pledge and look forward to these solid pro-transparency candidates being elected across Illinois.

Here some highlights I was able to quickly find for your enjoyment:

• Cook County President Todd Stroger’s salary is $170,000
• Cook County Freedom of Information contact Rich Velazquez’s salary is $111,240 (click here to read about the difficulty we had with a Cook Co. FOIA request)
• Cook County in 2006 had a $20,996 contract with the Chicago White Sox, but none with the Cubs.

Kudos to Commissioner Peraica for his work in not only presenting this data for the benefit of transparency and accountability, but for working to advance good government even more. A few weeks ago, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution by Peraica to make the Cook County the second county in Illinois to post its check register online.

Originally promised mixed income housing, a movie theater, a big box store and street level retail, Uptown residents have watched as 4 of 5 developers have bailed on the project, and the only part moving forward will create 178 units of low income housing. With Wilson Yard’s $52 million TIF stash, each unit will cost area taxpayers nearly $300,000.

Sounds pretty posh to me.

The plan for more low income housing is in a neighborhood where the Chicago Housing Authority’s own rules prevent it from building more low income housing. Not that rules matter or anything.

Read the entire piece here, and don’t forget to leave a comment or two!

Here’s a brief run-down of Sunshine Week editorials from Illinois newspapers.

Pantagraph: Illinois behind the times in making info available online

[Quinn] not only wants state agencies to make it easier for the public to get public records, but he ordered agencies to report back to him by next month on what kinds of information can be posted online.

It’s not clear whether Quinn’s February memorandum will result in salaries being put online, but it’s among three changes in government openness he began pushing for after taking office in January.

Southtown Star: Review of government Web site yields mixed results

Sunshine Week (www.sunshineweek.org) is about the public’s right to know what its government is doing, and why. Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.

Chicago Tribune: New Ill. governor promises government openness

Illinois has public records in 10 of the 20 online categories surveyed. But it doesn’t have a searchable statewide database of expenditures, the Illinois Department of Transportation doesn’t make contracts available on its Web site and hospital inspection reports aren’t available online, according to the survey.

Phillip Walter said if Arlington Heights officials truly want a transparent government, they’d post all village bills and contracts on the village’s Web site.

“It would be a tremendous positive for residents to see what their village government is spending their money on,” he said. “Trustees already get this information on an (Microsoft) Excel Spreadsheet, so it shouldn’t be that difficult.”

Unfortunately, current mayor Arlene Mulder is worried about cost. Someone needs to let Mayor Mulder know that transparency costs nothing, is easy to implement and pays off politically. In fact, that same “someone” should deliver a copy of our very own Kate Campaigne’s report on transparency to Mayor Mulder ASAP. I’m sure that if she knew, she’d be right there with Walter.

(Both candidates should consider signing our transparency pledge, too.)

The article even mentions the good deeds of DuPage County Auditor Bob Grogan:

DuPage Auditor Bob Grogan was able to do this without additional costs or manpower because the database was already in place. He said it takes about an hour or two each month to bring the reports up do date. In addition, he believes it will cut back on Freedom of Information Act requests and save his office time dealing with those questions.

Kate and I ran into Auditor Grogan the other day on the street and invited him to our office, where he signed the transparency pledge right then and there!

The transparency pledge is a basic tool in our arsenal for good government action that we provide to members of our Liberty Leaders program. If you’re not already a Liberty Leader, sign up today!

Hat-tip to Kara Beth Vance–a former intern of the Institute–for alerting us to this article.