Mayor Rahm Emanuel Monday continued his remormer pitch by taking aim at a stain from the Daley administration.
He said he's reforming Tax Increment Financing, or TIFS. We won't go into detail on what TIF's are, exactly, (the Reader's Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke did that in 2009) because it makes our head hurt.
Suffice it to say there have been reports of impropriety in how and where the tax dollars were used.
Emanuel said he's had enough, well, sort of enough, and commissioned a panel to make recommendations on how to make them more palatable:
“I believe TIF is an essential tool to help create jobs and economic growth for the City and its residents and we must ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and on projects that contribute to our long-term economic development goals and job creation,” said Mayor Emanuel.
The task force, which took 100 days to ferret out ideas on how to fix the troubled economic tool, submitted their 100-page report to the mayor this week.
The basic tenet of their recommendation: be more transparent about where millions of dollars in shadowy funds are being spent, and make sure there is more accountability for the people who spend it.
