Original version posted at 10:48 a.m.

After being approved this morning from the joint Finance and Economic, Capital & Technology Development committees, Alds. Manny Flores (1st Ward) and Scott Waguespack's (32nd Ward) TIF sunshine ordinance will finally move to the full City Council for a vote tomorrow. If the measure passes -- and the authors are confident it will -- the city's Community Development Department will have until July 30 to finally get the requested information on-line.

It seemed touch-and-go at times, but members of the two committees unanimously signed off on a compromise version of the ordinance.  In some last-minute negotiations, the planning department managed to extend the deadline for posting the information and get rid of a proposed requirement to post the info in a "machine processable format." (Check out our earlier post, which includes EveryBlock.com Dan O'Neil's take on why an ability to interface with the information is ultimately key to TIF transparency.)  But all in all, the core of the ordinance held up. Within months, every original report on each of the city's 161 TIF districts should be available online for use by journalists, watchdogs, and the public. And that's when things will get interesting.

Pulling back the shades on the TIF system (which captured $555 million in taxpayer dollars last year alone) is bound to raise more questions about how the money is being spent. Already today, Ald. Dick Mell (33rd Ward) expressed concern about those TIF funds that have been "siphoned away" to pay for unintended projects, referring to the mayor's practice of "porting" TIF dollars between neighboring districts.  Said Mell: "It's time now ... to put more of the money back to what TIFs are designed for or [release] that money."

We'll have an update on the full council vote tomorrow.