Quigley Takes On Mayor Daley

Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley has never been one to shy away from tough issues, earning his reputation as the leading reform Democrat in Cook County.

Now, Quigley is squaring off for a fight with the entire city council and Mayor Daley to reform Tax Increment Finance Districts, or TIFs. Ben Joravsky writes another brilliant piece in this week's Reader that strikes the right balance between policy and politics, marinating an otherwise dry topic into a delicious journalistic meal, topped with Quigley's usual servings of "I can't believe he just said THAT on the record" quotes:

"I didn’t go into this thing thinking, ‘How can I piss off Mayor Daley?’ But with these TIFs Daley’s saying arrogantly, ‘I’m going to TIF the whole Loop. I don’t need your authority. I’m not going to advise you. My needs are more important than yours.’"

And

“I understand you don’t want to upset the mayor, and I don’t want to go down in a flaming ball of martyrdom,” he says. “But am I supposed to say nothing because it’s the mayor’s program? He’s powerful and popular, and it gives him a pass. It’s Shakespearean—the seeds of his problems come from his strengths. If you give someone a pass when they do something wrong, they’ll never change.”

Joravsky distills a compelling case against TIFs, which he outright labels as a slush fund for the Mayor and aldermen. The shocker was that the number of TIFs has mushroomed from 40 to over 140 since the last decade, and TIFs now cover a third of the city.

The one missing ingredient in Joravsky's piece is acknowledgement that the city's patronage army has shrunk from 25,000 - 30,000 in it's heyday to less than 5,000 today, so politicians have turned to TIFs as a way to dispense or withhold favors. The problem being of course that its the property tax payers who are left to foot the bill for all the the money that TIF districts don't pay for schools, parks and city services.

Still an excellent read.