If you want to know why taxes are going through the roof, check out the city’s latest propaganda about tax increment financing.
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As for the primer itself, I’ll read it so you don’t have to. It’s set up as a Q and A, starting with the basics: “What is TIF?” The answer: “TIF stands for Tax Increment Financing.” Well, at least they got that right. But it’s got the wrong date for the first TIF district (created in 1984, not 1983), it screws up the basic explanation of how a TIF works (mixing up tax rate and assessed value), and it inflates the amount of TIF money going into Mayor Daley’s “Modern Schools Across Chicago” program ($600 million, not $800 million, according to the mayor’s own PR, not to mention that the schools overall are actually losing money thanks to TIFs). It even gets the name of the program wrong (“Modern Schools Throughout Chicago”).
And those are the minor mistakes. The document also says that TIFs are created and run in an open process, when in fact the program is well hidden from the public—even if you live in a TIF district, how much you’re paying into the TIF fund isn’t even itemized on your tax bill. It says TIFs are “used to encourage development and investment where it would not otherwise occur,” but in fact the money largely goes to wealthy neighborhoods—like the Loop. It says the approval of TIFs is closely monitored, but in reality oversight is limited to a rubber-stamp board filled with mayoral appointees who know better than to ask hard questions.
Sigh.
I’m not surprised by this latest move, but I am insulted by it. The city is basically saying, We can get away with telling you anything about TIFs—that up is down, that black is white—because you’re too apathetic to care or too stupid to figure out that we’re putting you on. And so far the city has been right.
Here things get tricky. In order to reduce the burden on home owners, the county offers a home owner’s exemption, which reduces taxes for people who live on their property. The default amount that’s knocked off is $5,000, but since 2004 it’s been inflated to $20,000. That was set to expire this year, and after three years of wrangling, legislators agreed to hike the exemption to as much as $40,000. When the bill was signed, house speaker Michael Madigan, senate president Emil Jones, and Mayor Daley announced that at last the poor beleaguered home owner was getting some break.
So who are this year’s big losers? Poor residents of neighborhoods like Garfield Park, Lawndale, Englewood, and the near west side. My initial analysis shows that when the tax bills come out, any day now, those folks will be looking at tax hikes as high as 100 percent.
