It’s hard to imagine a public document as oddly self-contradictory as a Cook County property tax bill. They’re intended to be easy-to-understand and painstakingly accurate accounts of how the city and the county spend the tax dollars you send them. And yet they play a key role in covering up the real cost of Chicago’s tax increment financing districts, or TIFs.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
To truly appreciate the depths of deception you have to know a little something about the connection between TIFs and tax bills. TIFs are districts created by the City Council at the behest of Mayor Daley, the city’s planning department, or local aldermen, ostensibly to generate economic development. From creation to extinction, a period of at least 23 years, a TIF puts a rough cap on the amount of property taxes the schools, parks, and other taxing bodies get from the district. Any new property taxes generated after a TIF has been set up–the so-called increment created by new property and rising assessments–goes into the TIF fund. The more TIFs the city puts into place–and there are at least 145 now–the more property taxes we have to pay to compensate for the money they divert from the schools, the parks, etc.
Originally TIFs were intended as economic development tools for blighted communities that would otherwise find it hard to attract investment. But they long ago ceased to function in keeping with their original intent. There are TIFs in affluent areas like the Loop, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview. They’re used to subsidize everything from the construction of high-end condos to the renovation of tax-exempt buildings on Loyola University’s lakefront campus. Daley and the aldermen love TIFs for the very reason reformers like Leavy abhor them–they’re slush funds unregulated by any independent agency. And their cost is enormous: according to figures kept by the Cook County clerk’s office, TIFs took in $335 million in 2004, up from $287 million in 2003. Last year’s TIF take is expected to total well over $400 million, though the official numbers haven’t been released yet.
Why do Cook County officials send out bills that they know misrepresent actual property tax allocations? A cynic might suspect it’s because this allows Daley and his allies to cling to the myth that TIFs don’t raise taxes. But Pappas and Cook County clerk David Orr insist they’ve never been pressured by the mayor or his aides to conceal TIF information from the public. Pappas says she’s ready to put TIF information on the property tax bills as soon as it can be done: “David Orr’s office sends us the information that we put on the bill. It’s not a big deal to us. If David sends us the information, we’ll put it on the bill–period.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/AP Photo/Julio Cortez.
