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The LaSalle Central TIF: In Like FlynnChicago ReaderNovember 24, 2006By Ben JoravskyClick here to read the article in its original form on the Chicago Reader's website.When Mayor Daley proposed the LaSalle Central tax increment financing district in June, I predicted it would sail through the confirmation process from start to finish without one member of an oversight committee asking a single question. I was wrong. At the penultimate hurdle, the November 14 meeting of the finance committee, 44th Ward alderman Tom Tunney spoke up. Reading from a list put together by Cook County Board commissioner Mike Quigley, with whom he shares his Belmont Avenue ward office, Tunney asked several pertinent questions regarding the impact TIFs have on taxes and school funding. TIFs don’t take money from schools, aldermen Bernard Stone and Ed Burke responded. Then they launched into one of those jargon-filled explanations TIF boosters use when they want to confuse the hell out of everybody. Tunney nodded, apparently satisfied, and the debate ended. A TIF freezes the amount of property tax dollars the schools, parks, county, etc, can draw out of a TIF district for 23 years and channels the remainder into a discretionary development fund. If the schools are getting $100 the day a TIF passes, that’s all they’ll get for the next 23 years; meanwhile inflation and other factors will cause their costs to rise. So where does the extra money for the schools come from? Higher taxes, of course. Does a TIF cost the schools money? Absolutely. TIFs absorb money that could otherwise be spent on teachers and classrooms and after-school programs and that indoor running track the school board’s been promising to build for about the last 50 years. As soon as Tunney was finished, Alderman Burt Natarus called for a quick vote. First, Burke cautioned, there were people signed up to speak. Natarus sighed, slumped in his chair, and looked bored as four separate witnesses pleaded that the council at least study the impact of the other 140-plus TIFs (two new ones were proposed that very day) before adopting a new one. The instant the last speaker finished Natarus again called for a vote. The finance committee unanimously approved the TIF, and the next day the full City Council adopted it without debate, just before approving the budget. So now the TIF program, intended to eradicate blight in low-income neighborhoods starving for investment, will be applied to one of the city’s hottest real estate markets. One last point of interest about the LaSalle Central TIF. The finance committee didn’t have a quorum when they adopted it. There were only five members on the floor, one of whom appeared to be sleeping. One of my fellow TIF geeks spotted the significance right away. He got a copy of the City Council rules, and sure enough there it was: “a quorum of the Committee on Finance . . . shall be fifteen (15) members.” Robert’s Rules of Order, which governs council proceedings, says that “in the absence of a quorum, any business transacted . . . is null and void.” We all got excited until someone called a lawyer, who said the issue would be moot once the full council approved the TIF. In the end it’s only appropriate that the council broke its own rules when passing the LaSalle Central TIF. When it comes to TIFs the only rule is that every rule is meant to be broken. Enjoy your taxes.
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