Since he proposed his budget for 2010, Mayor Daley has been busy with reporters’ questions and increasingly louder calls for reform of the city’s tax increment financing program. The TIF program is complicated—but no one is going to understand it any better by listening to Daley talk about it. In his comments after a tree-planting event on the southwest side this weekend and during a wide-ranging interview with Chicago Public Radio that aired November 1, the mayor played fast and loose with the facts when he wasn’t ducking the question altogether. Here’s some of what he had to say—and what was wrong with it.
In addition, the mayor and his budget team previously argued that this sizable fund would improve the city’s bond rating, reducing the cost of borrowing “when the city issues debt to complete neighborhood improvement projects and address other critical needs.” But in fact borrowing is now likely to be more expensive, which will mean either a slowdown in neighborhood improvement projects or an increase in taxes to pay the difference.
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DALEY On leasing the Skyway, downtown parking garages, and meter system: “I’m the one who started talking about leasing public assets. No other city has done this in America.”
So no other cities are doing this, or they all are?
REALLY? We at the Reader have been asking for more details on TIFs for years. It would be a fantastic public service if the mayor would personally show us where TIF money is going in each district.
DALEY On how improving our schools and job-training programs is the best way to attract new employers to Chicago: “It’s talent that’s going to bring companies to our city or to America—that’s what India and China have proved. It isn’t that I’m going to give a tax credit or something to a company.”
