Tax Wall Street, TIF Reform - on ballot

NA4J members have placed two advisory referenda on the March 20 primary ballot in Uptown precincts, to give voters the chance to make a direct statement to policymaker on two hot issues:

1) Should the hundreds of millions of dollars in Chicago's TIF slush funds be refunded to schools, parks, county health care, services, etc. (instead of being used for corporate welfare for friends of Mayor 1% (no, that's not the wording ... see below)
* more than $800 million sits in these slush funds, while libraries and health/human services are slashed, transit is cut, etc.
* these TIF dollars were long ago diverted from their intended purpose of spurring development in blighted communities

2) Should Wall Street (and their Chicago counterparts at Chicago Mercantile Exchange) pay for wrecking the economy through a small sales tax on financial transactions?
* A national financial transactions tax would generate about $350 Billion per year.
* A sales tax of one dollar (a buck from from the billionaires) on each contract traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (average value of contract: $225,000. price with the 'buck from the billionaires': $225,001) would generate $6Billion for Illinois to put people back to work, fund our schools, create low cost housing, restore the human in human services, etc.

These questions are on the ballot March 20, and the vote will send a message to elected officials how seriously to take the multiple coalition campaigns on these issues.

Join the fight!
- register voters
- work a precinct (knock doors, make phone calls)
- host an educational house meeting
- work election day (March 20) GOTV, poll watching, leafleting

contact us at info@actionforjustice.org

Donate to the campaign online by getting your ticket to the Feb 19 'Song & Struggle' event.

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Here is the text of what will be on the March 20 ballot:

“Should the city of Chicago return all tax dollars held in TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts that should have been allocated to the Public Schools, Parks and the County, to these public bodies and only be permitted to use future TIF revenues to preserve and develop affordable housing (including homeless shelters and transitional housing), living wage sustainable jobs and businesses and youth and senior services and programs?”

“Should local, state and federal governments adopt policies to tax speculative financial transactions, including but not limited to derivatives and futures contracts, and us e the revenue collected to fund the creation and maintenance of programs and services that help low and moderate income people meet basic human needs including jobs, affordable housing, health care and education?”

Daley & Dishonesty - what , again?!?

Our friends at Progress Illinois blog outline some of the ways Mayor Daley continues his dishonest ways around property taxes -- and that Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is at the center of the scam.

This is no news to members of Northside Action for Justice, who have been pointing out the fundamental dishonesty and injustice of the city's TIF program for more than a decade.

Daley -- and most Aldermen, when it suits their interests -- pretend that TIFs are magic, and create money without raising property taxes. They pretend that committing millions of public dollars to institutions like Loyola and S&C Electric is a free lunch that neither adds to the tax burden of residents nor takes money away from other essential public services like schools, parks, city services, libraries, etc.

Those claims are as ridiculous as was the praise for the emperor's famous new clothes.

If we can be honest for a moment, let's admit that taxes are important and necessary. Taxes pay for all public programs and services, and that's the way it's supposed to be. Government is not supposed to be a business - or run like one - whose primary directive is to make a profit.

The debate about taxation should be about fairness in who pays, effectiveness in how public goods/services are delivered and equity in who benefits. Pretending that TIFs are magic is a way to avoid debating whether the community should be paying for Loyola's private, tax-exempt campus construction or a former Alderman's real estate deals.

Maybe a requirement for participatory budgeting for TIFs would help bring this debate back to the true issues.

Will Alderman Allen become a TIF reformer?

Hard to believe, but the Mayor's abusive and dishonest use the Tax Increment Finance (TIF) program and mismanagement of privatization and the city budget have led even usually compliant Aldermen to make some peeps of protest.

Alderman Tom Allen of the Northwest side has proposed renaming TIFs the "Over Tax Fund".

Given the refusal of most Aldermen to challenge the Mayor's dishonest portrayal of the billion dollars sitting in TIFs as magic money generated without tax increases, or the repeated abuse of a program intended to relieve blight and reduce poverty into a slush fund for politically connected developers and private institutions, even this mild questioning of the emperor's clothes is encouraging.

Is the anger from residents finally lighting a fire under elected officials?

Even relatively risk-averse groups like IVI-IPO have called for a moratorium on any new TIFs. Mike Quigley won his seat in Congress partly due to community support he won by questioning TIFs.

"Affordable" for Whom??? Yet another TIF Abuse

The Chicago Sun-Times has a story about yet another example of how Chicago abuses Tax Increment Financing as a slush fund for Mayoral and Aldermanic friends and donors. This time it's about so-called "affordable" housing around the Maxwell street destruction ... er ... UIC redevelopment.

Another recent TIF atrocity was handing money to the "blighted" building formerly known as Sears Tower. For a sampling of past TIF abuse, see the Reader's TIF archive.

Beyond the now-familiar process of using public power and resources (TIF, zoning changes, etc.) to make powerful friends rich, the Suntimes finally uses some ink on the question NA4J folks have been asking for over a decade:

"Affordable" for whom????

The key basic questions on all public policy proposals should be:
* who benefits?
* who pays?
* are there other ways to achieve stated goals?

In the case of TIFs and redevelopment, the system is rigged to favor insiders, liek the people that buy "affordable" housing as an investment and them flip them for easy, politically-generated profit. Like the woman that made $29,000 without even moving into a subsidized townhome (she already owned two). The flippers made an average profit of $63,000.

Beyond the question of the politically connected gaming the system is the broader policy question of "affordable to whom"? Many gentrifying development deals include some kind of "affordable" component to alleviate community opposition. these so-called 'affordble' units are key aspects of why the deals are supposedly in the public interest.

But housing advocates have been arguing for decades that the city uses "affordability definitions that defy any logic.

For example, to qualify for 'affordable' units at University Village, a 4-person family's income must be below $75,000 per year -- which is considered 'low income' if one uses the metro region figures. Costs -- rent or purchase prices -- are not based on one's income, but on a formula based on the median income -- of the metro region.

The median household income (regardless of household size) in the city of Chicago was about $45,000 in 2007.

Using the formula based on the metro region means that many so-called 'affordable' units are priced for residents with the highest 15-20% of incomes.

The TIF reform referenda that passed overwhelmingly in sample precincts emphasize that housing produced should be affordable to households below that community's median income.

Large Majorities Support Housing & Jobs

Voters in a diverse sampling of precincts in the 46th ward were asked two referendum questions on important public policy issues (Nov4).

By a 2-1 margin, voters support 40% of TIF revenue being allocated to create/preserve housing that is affordable to households at or below that community's median income.

By a 4-1 margin, voters agreed that companies that benefit from public subsidies (including TIF) should be required to:
* give community residents firs tchance to apply for jobs
* ensure that all workers earn a Living Wage
* respect worker rights, include health and safety standards and the right to organize.

These same precincts voted roughly the same as the neighborhood and the city on the Obama-McCain race.

Policy referenda are advisory in Chicago, but clearly there is strong support among the electorate for progressive government policies that will help address the housing and employment crisis we face.