|
Proposed law would provide TIF tax infoDaily HeraldSeptember 13, 2006By Rob OlmsteadTax increment financing districts are about as exciting as a pet rock. Tax hikes, on the other hand, command your attention and are more likely to whip you into a frenzy. Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley sees a correlation between the two and he thinks if tax increment financing, or TIF, information was on your tax bill you’d see it, too. So he’s proposing an ordinance to show you. “TIFs are a back-door tax hike,” contends the Chicago Democrat. If people living in TIFs saw how much of their money goes to TIF districts, it would be the first step toward reining in an abused redevelopment device that takes money from schools and other taxing districts, Quigley said. Whoa. Hold on there, said Norm Sims, executive director of the Illinois Tax Increment Association. Nobody is taking money from schools. But before we get to that, what is a tax increment financing district? A TIF district is an area designated by a village or city for redevelopment. In that area, the amount of taxes that go to taxing bodies is frozen. As property values go up, excess taxes go into a TIF fund — controlled by the town — to develop that area. As originally written, it was designed to be a tool to develop blighted areas. For that reason, said Sims, no one is stealing anything. Without the development plan, property values wouldn’t increase in that area as fast. Schools may lose out for the term of the TIF, which can be up to 23 years, but at its end, they have a much bigger property base to draw on, Sims contended. Maybe originally, but TIFs now are being used for areas that aren’t really blighted, Quigley countered. That takes money from school districts and those districts have to then raise their own taxes to compensate for the natural property tax growth they would have received, he said. If all the money going to TIFs now were diverted back into taxing districts, said Cook County Clerk David Orr, tax rates would decline by about 7 percent. Under Quigley’s proposal, someone living in a TIF district would have an extra line on their bill showing how much of their payment goes to that TIF. Residents now in a TIF have the existence of the TIF noted on their tax bill, but no dollar figure. In fact, as it stands, Quigley said, the amount now shown paid by that person to a taxing body, such as Cook County, is inaccurate because a portion of that amount really is going to the TIF. While it would be difficult to calculate those figures, Orr supports the proposal and is, in fact, working on doing that without a county ordinance requiring it. Whether TIFs need reining in is another matter, Orr said, but he supports giving more information to people so they can decide. In principle, Sims, too, supports giving taxpayers more information, he said.
|
||||||||||