Yesterday, WTTW's Chicago Tonight interviewed new Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, who last weekend was appointed by Democratic committeemen to replace Mike Quigley in representing the 10th District.  If you're interested in learning about this new arrival on the Chicago electoral scene, be sure to watch the full interview.  One exchange that caught our eye, however, came when Gainer commented on the tax increment financing (TIF) system in Chicago and Cook County.  Watch it:

While extremely brief, these remarks should be somewhat encouraging for those who worry Gainer will be a rubber-stamp for Mayor Daley.  The TIF network is the mayor's personal "piggy bank" and, despite the system's obvious flaws and dysfunctions, his administration has made it extremely difficult to pass any reforms.  Gainer shows here that she sees one of the major problems with how each TIF district is configured.  In his report, "A Tale Of Two Cities" (PDF), Quigley and his staff highlighted how, when a new TIF district is created, the local property tax base available to other taxing districts is locked in and does not grow with inflation:

The base is set at the time the TIF is created, and only when parcels are added or dropped from the TIF does the base change. The base is not adjusted for inflation – that is, property value growth related to changes in the national economy as distinct from growth caused by local factors, including the economic development incentive the TIF is intended to provide. It is often claimed that TIFs don’t take any money from the taxing districts that overlap them. The basis for this assertion is the fact that these taxing jurisdictions continue to tax the base throughout the 23-year life of the TIF. But because the value of this base is being eroded each year by inflation, these local governments are in fact losing money to TIF: while taxing districts’ real costs increase over time, a portion of property tax revenues allocated to meet these costs lags further and further behind for the life of the TIF, making it more expensive for local governments to meet their expenditure needs even without any attendant increase in services.

Quigley's report makes a simple recommendation: "Adjust the base every year by inflation."  However, this reform -- like many of the others proposed in the report -- needs to happen at the state legislative or municipal level.

So what could Gainer do in her capacity as a county commissioner to reform the system?  She could push to make sure residents know exactly how much of their tax payments are going into the TIF coffers.  From Quigley's Progress Illinois column on the "TIF Twilight Zone":

The single worst aspect of the TIF system in Cook County is that taxpayers residing in the districts have no idea how much of their tax payments end up in TIF accounts. Indeed, while TIF is listed on every bill alongside the agencies receiving property taxes, the line always reads $0.00. This is due to a quirk in the way the County Clerk has historically calculated tax rates. But as a consequence, the taxpaying public is misinformed. In response, I have introduced a County ordinance to change the way property tax bills are calculated so that taxpayers can see how much of their payments are going into TIF accounts. The measure would also add a line to all tax bills in Cook County reminding taxpayers that the use of TIFs by municipalities increases tax rates.

We'll be watching to see if Gainer continues to speak out about the flawed TIF system and follows through on Quigley's previous efforts to reshape it.