Progress Illinois

An attempt to recoup the nearly $10 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) subsidies that the City of Chicago handed over to Republic Windows & Doors died quickly in the City Council’s Finance Committee today.

The effort to go after the defunct company (whose owners have since set up shop in Iowa) was led by Alds. Manny Flores (1st Ward) and Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward). At issue was whether the Republic owners met the terms of the original redevelopment agreement with the city, which required them to make their “commercially reasonable best efforts” at creating a minimum of 549 jobs.

The aldermen suspect that the company never lived up to the job creation clause. But at today’s Finance Committee hearing, City of Chicago corporation counsel Mara Georges told them that, because the terms of the TIF agreement expired in 2006, there was no way to recoup the $10 million.

Flores went on to press Georges about whether, prior to 2006, the city ensured that the terms were met. “Did we ever inquire?” he asked her. “Did we ever check?”

That line of questioning leads us to Flores’ next step. The Northwest Side alderman will introduce a separate ordinance on Wednesday that aims to strengthen TIF accountability. What he’d like to see is pretty straightforward: a formal set of guidelines -- including an auditing system -- to determine if companies benefiting from TIF are living up their end of the bargain.

The ordinance will need 26 votes to pass. Considering that many aldermen are very protective of the flawed TIF system, this could be tough to achieve.

Here’s another indication that TIF reform isn’t the highest priority at City Hall: the fact that the interim director of the Department of Community Development (formerly known as the planning department) wasn’t aware that TIF reform was up for debate until well into today’s Finance Committee session.

“Does somebody from the department of whatever-they-call-it-these-days know they’re calling this meeting?” committee chair Ed Burke said as the meeting began.

But the most telling opinion came from Georges herself, who had this to say about demanding more accountability upfront: “We don’t want to impede these deals.”

Flores wasn’t pleased with the response. “I want to know what the return on our investment was,” he said of the Republic agreement. “This is bad public policy.”

Image of the Goose Island TIF district via the Windy Citizen TIF Map.