Open Illinois.org

A TIF sunshine ordinance passed last April for the city of Chicago and sparked some hope it would help people more clearly understand TIF and help them track the enormous of amount of tax dollars flowing into the various TIF districts throughout Chicago.

The ordinance, unfortunately, hasn’t produced the results so eagerly anticipated, according to the Chicagoist:

One of the goals of having public documents online is to encourage people to easily access any and all information they’re looking for - and find additional information related to the topics they’re interested in. Alds. Manny Flores (1st) and Scott Waguespack (32nd) said, at the beginning of their push for the ordinance last year, that their goal was to prevent a second Republic Windows and Doors fiasco (the city lost millions of dollars because it failed to police its redundant TIF agreements). Instead, if one clicks on too many links (apparently more than four), the site collapses.

There’s too much money involved in TIF for the public to have such a lack of knowledge about them and for the government to have no accountability in creating and managing them. This first showing of so-called TIF transparency does not do the job.