While much of the country was losing its collective mind over the prospect of a President Trump, Chicago’s City Council unanimously passed Mayor Emanuel’s budget.
Because the Red Line project will be paid for in part with a TIF. And the city’s official line on TIFs is that they don’t raise property taxes. Even though they do.
Having read somewhere that the universe is “constantly expanding,” young Alvy’s concluded that one day it will explode.
Recall, if you will, one of Emanuel’s most famous lines, uttered when he was President Obama’s chief of staff: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
The mayor’s rushing to pass the transit TIF in order to secure federal funding before Trump’s inaugurated January 20. Emanuel’s logic is that there’s a good chance Trump may deny funding requests from a city he apparently hates because we took down that honorary sign we never should have put up in the first place. Oh yeah, and for promising to protect immigrants. (For more on how Chicago transportation could be affected by a Trump presidency, see John Greenfield’s column today.)
Originally, TIFs were intended to subsidize privately owned, property-tax-paying projects—like shopping malls—in low-income, blighted communities.
