When the Chicago City Council approved the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Sunshine Amendment in April of 2009 that called for the creation of a consolidated and enhanced TIF information website, the City took a significant step towards…
The redesign of the Civic Federation website in July has provided the public, government officials, and the media better access to the Federation’s analyses of government services in Illinois. The regularly-updated Civic Federation blog…
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2010 include public pension reform, requiring state government to develop and implement performance measurement and a capital improvement plan, the dissolving of the Illinois International…
The Civic Federation opposes the FY2010 City of Chicago budget of $6.14 billion because it is unsustainable and relies too heavily on one-time reserve funds to close a $520.0 million budget deficit. The proposed drastic draw down of long-…
Under the old state statute that limited the property tax rates of the Chicago Public Schools, Tax Increment Financing directly restricted property tax revenues available to CPS because it froze part of the equalized assessed value (EAV)—…
Chicago Public Schools has received almost $400 million in Tax Increment Financing revenue from the creation of the first City of Chicago TIF in 1984 through July 2009 and is scheduled to receive over $491.3 million more according to…
One of the Civic Federation’s ongoing concerns has been transparency in the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) by the City of Chicago and State of Illinois. Although the Civic Federation supports the use of TIF as municipal economic…
Did you ever wonder how your property tax dollars are spent by the City of Chicago? How many people work for the Department of Streets and Sanitation? How much those employees are paid? What kinds of taxes and fees the City levies and how…
Police, parks, streets, schools, community colleges, public hospitals, elections, courts, jails, mosquito abatement, sewage treatment…these are just a few of the services that, in Illinois, are provided by many different local governments…
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2009 include public pension reform, the dissolving of the Illinois International Port District, creating a new governing board for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, requiring all…
