The Invisible Tax
Here’s a great piece from Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke elaborating on some of the TIF projects in the Chicago area, revealing little known facts about the incredible amount of tax dollars flowing into the city’s TIF troughs.
Joravsky and Dumke have discovered an “off-the-books kitty of taxpayer money equivalent to a sixth of the official city budget.” In other words, the city’s official 2009 budget equaled $6 billion — so it had an estimated $1 billion in TIF funds on hand at the start of 2009.
Although the City Council unanimously passed a TIF transparency ordinance in April 2009, requiring data showing the use of TIF money be posted online, we’re not seeing all we need to on the website and “city still isn’t sharing most of the details of TIF spending with the public.”
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