Progress Illinois

How will Chicago Public Schools close the daunting $700 million budget shortfall projected for next school year?

Resolution of the budget crisis in Springfield certainly would help; state government owes CPS a total of $370 million for the last and current school year. Another source of dollars administrators could seek to tap: the city's tax increment financing (TIF) districts. Recall that CPS will gain around $90 million out of the $180 million in TIF funds that lame duck Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is proposing to use as surplus in his FY 2011 budget. CPS is getting a fraction of what it could, however. Even after this year's surplus declaration, an estimated $520 million in TIF reserves will remain untouched.

It would be rational for top leaders at CPS and members of the Board of Education to pound the table and demand property taxes stashed away in TIF accounts. The Board of Education has the most to lose by the proliferation of TIF districts in Chicago, which freeze the amount of property taxes the board can cull from those districts. Elsewhere, school districts often serve as a check on municipal governments' appetite for tax increment financing. Not so in Chicago. UIC professor Rachel Weber talked about this dynamic at a TIF panel discussion earlier this fall. Here's a clip:

A variation of this fight is happening out in Oak Park. The situation has its own specific history and legal background but it does provide a recent example of a school district pushing back against a municipality's TIF policy. Leaders of Oak Park-River Forest High School sued the Village of Oak Park earlier this year for allegedly violating an earlier deal that allowed the village's downtown TIF to be extended an additional 12 years. In exchange, the Wednesday Journal reported this spring, "village hall was to 'carve out' properties in Oak Park's downtown tax increment financing district ... and funnel money back to other taxing bodies. But that hasn't been done, the high school alleges." Maybe it's time for the Board of Education and CPS to have a chat with their counterparts out in Oak Park ...

There was no vote on the Sweet Home Chicago Ordinance at City Council on Wednesday, but proponents of the legislation say they've got multiple options at their disposal to get the bill -- or an alternative version of it -- finally passed. Sweet Home, as originally written, would mandate that the city designate a minimum of 20 percent of the tax increment financing dollars collected in Chicago on an annual basis for affordable housing projects, including revitalizing foreclosed homes. We've tracked the fight for the bill and its status in council extensively over the last few months.

Faced with a delay that had stretched to well more than a year, Ald. Walter Burnett (27th Ward), the legislation's chief sponsor, threatened to use a rare parliamentary maneuver called motion to discharge to force the full City Council to take an up or down vote on the bill at the November 3 council meeting. But Burnett said at the "ninth hour" Alds. Ray Suarez (31st Ward) and Ed Burke (14th Ward) approached him with a deal: drop the motion to discharge and prior to November 17 we'll allow a committee hearing and, crucially, vote on the original ordinance or a compromise bill that's still being drafted. Burnett said after conferring with Sweet Home supporters, he agreed to the plan. Suarez and Burke chair the housing and finance committees, respectively. There's been one hearing about Sweet Home, but no vote on it.

Julie Dworkin, policy director for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said the Sweet Home coalition agreed to put off the motion to discharge vote for practical reasons. It's preferable to go through the regular legislative process, she said, "because certain aldermen who support the ordinance do not support using the motion to discharge because they don't like to be so in your face to the committee chairs." Dworkin is also confident that Sweet Home would make it out of a joint housing-finance committee hearing. She pointed out that Sweet Home backers still can use the motion to discharge, as there are two council meetings remaining this month, for the original ordinance if they do not support the alternative. The exact contours of that bill -- whether it preserves the basic idea of Sweet Home or overly waters it down -- could determine whether Ald. Burnett forces a showdown in the full council on an important, yet long-stalled bill.

Burnett, who's long been close with outgoing Mayor Richard Daley's administration, acknowledged he was frustrated with the delays that have kept Sweet Home stalled. "Personally, I think it's the mayor holding it up," he said. The end game for this legislation, however, finally appears to be at hand.