I was up to my neck in tax increment financing documents last week when the phone calls and text messages started coming in: You have to hear what Tom Allen’s saying in the City Council.
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“Everyone in this room is nervous because we have been told that if anyone messes with the TIFs, you are going to lose your park projects, street projects,” Allen said. “Did the city not exist before? We built buildings without TIFs. It’s all tax money. If you call it an apple or orange it is TIF money. We are not likely to lose this money. We’re playing a game. We are trying to confuse the public.”
Wow. With that one speech, Allen dragged the controversial tax increment financing program out of the shadows and into the spotlight, where it actually became the subject of council debate for a few minutes as mayoral allies like Berny Stone and Patrick O’Connor hurried to defend it as an engine for development. “I don’t know what your problem is with TIFs,” Stone said to Allen. “They’re a great tool.”
“I’m not against TIFs—they are a useful economic-development tool—but I’m just saying we can’t keep on going the way we have been,” says Allen. “I mean, this is not a casual problem we’re facing. We’re in a emergency situation so when you’re in an emergency situation you have to look under the rug, turn over the desk, to find a revenue source that will save that day.”
At first he limited his criticisms to offhand remarks at neighborhood forums where he had no reason to think reporters or administration officials were listening—such as the one I happened to attend last year in the basement of a Portage Park church .
Over the last year some aldermen have called on the administration to share more details of how TIF money is spent. But until Allen spoke out, none had used the council stage as a platform to rip the way the TIF program is run. Braver still, he made his remarks when he knew he’d get the attention of Mayor Daley, who famously gets irked when anyone votes against his budget proposal and infuriated when anyone criticizes him in public. Elected officials and office-seekers around here generally avoid saying anything negative about the mayor whether he’s in the room or not—what sense is there in antagonizing the most powerful person in town?
“There were some comments from some of my colleagues—mostly positive,” he says. “That’s it.”
