Chicago's Shadow Budget: TIF

Ben Joravsky has another eye opening article on Chicago's shady TIF districts:

Over the last ten years Wislow and his wife, Susan, have contributed at least $4,000 to Mayor Daley's election fund, as well as $2,000 to the coffers of Alderman Ed Burke, chairman of the City Council's finance committee, which oversees TIF deals with private companies, and $2,150 to the campaign of Illinois Supreme Court justice Anne Burke, Alderman Burke's wife. U.S. Equities gave another $4,000 to Daley and $10,000 to Ed Burke. Nancy Pacher, the president of U.S. Equities Realty, is a member of the Chicago Plan Commission, the body of mayoral appointees that approves major development deals, including the controversial proposal to move the Children's Museum into Grant Park.

Meanwhile Roseland and Englewood, two neighborhoods so deprived of resources and services that researchers consider them "food deserts," will together have spent less than $12 million in TIF funding in 2009, according to the budget.

When critics have pointed out the TIF program's inequities in the past, Mayor Daley's black and Hispanic political allies have come to its defense.

What a scam.