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Last week the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, an organization of 272 area mayors put together by Daley, proposed creating a new wing of the state education bureaucracy intended to guarantee “transparency” in educational fundiing. As Fran Spielman has reported in the Sun-Times, under the proposal, “school districts would develop long-term financial plans that include multiyear forecasts of revenue, spending and debt. Long-term capital improvement plans would also be required.” The state would be authorized to withhold funding from school districts that “thumb their noses at the reforms and remove recalcitrant administrators.”
I’m talking, of course, about tax increment financing districts, of which Chicago has at least 150 (one more was recommended by the city’s Community Development Commission on April 10, the day Daley and the caucus unveiled their proposal).
