Buried yesterday in an otherwise blustery Politico story on Rahm Emanuel's potential mayoral run was this tiny and fascinating piece of news:
On
Wednesday night, Emanuel broke bread with his replacement in Congress,
Rep. Michael Quigley, who briefed him on an arcane but important local
tax issue.
Rep. Quigley, for those with short memories, used to
serve on Cook County's Board of Commissioners. While there, he lead
the charge for county-wide tax increment financing (TIF) reform,
penning an influential report on the topic in 2007. As a Progress Illinois guest columnist
in 2008, he wrote about the importance of TIF transparency. One of his reform proposals -- indexing the local tax base to inflation -- served
as one of the pillars for our first "Getting Creative with TIFs" post. When Quigley talks TIFs, he's worth listening to.
If that's the "local tax issue" they discussed, let's hope Rahm took solid notes ...
More than 1,000 Chicago-area seniors and their allies 
In a move to protect healthcare amid growing tensions between President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other political leaders in Washington, D.C., members of the President’s home-state Democratic Congressional Delegation—and SEIU—are urging him to avoid Medicaid cuts that would impact 2 million Illinois residents.