Progress Illinois

When Daley administration officials promote their decision to grant tax increment financing (TIF) dollars to large, profitable companies based in the city's Loop, there's usually a line about the jobs that the TIF grant will help "retain" downtown.

Thing is, the mayor's TIF-centric economic strategy hasn't proven all that effective on the jobs front, especially for a pretty important constituency: residents of the city of Chicago. That's according to "Loopholes," a new investigation by the Chicago Reporter's Angela Caputo (a Progress Illinois alumna). Her analysis finds that the city's Loop shed nearly 13,000 jobs "during the better part of the past decade." And 94 percent of those cuts were borne by city dwellers, with the vast majority of the job losses hitting South and Southwest Siders. Meanwhile, downtown's two biggest TIF districts (in the Loop proper and on the Near South Side) siphoned off $1.2 billion in property tax dollars in the name of economic development from other taxing bodies that are now facing their own budget crises.

"The whole point of TIF is to spur development in blighted neighborhoods. But the Reporter has found that many of the areas needing economic development money the most aren’t getting much; their sales tax revenue is shrinking, and the number of Loop jobs they hold are dwindling," Caputo writes. "At the same time, elected officials have failed to force businesses to set local hiring or wage standards, though many of these businesses are benefitting from millions of local tax incentives to move to the Loop."

The problems with how the Daley administration used tax increment financing are legion, and the Reporter's new piece adds yet another chapter to the story.

That's the number of days that the outgoing mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, had served in office as of yesterday. The tally marked him the city's longest-running government executive -- his father, Richard J. Daley, served exactly one day less than the milestone Richard M. reached on Sunday.

Comparing the styles, accomplishments, and failures of father and son is inevitable, and the Sun-Times' Fran Spielman's recent run-down is a good place to start thinking through some of their similarities and differences. Whet Moser at the Reader provides a link to James Krohe Jr.'s 1998 piece about Daley the Elder, and the paper has posted a handy list of all of its cover stories about the Mayors Daley to its website.

A point that's both self-evident and one that bears repeating is both Mayor Richard J. and Richard M. Daley must be situated in broader economic and political contexts. There's more at stake in trying to understand them than their personalities and many of the big-ticket policies they brought to bear on Chicago had roots beyond the city limits. Krohe noted in his profile of Mayor Richard J. Daley that his "luck put him in City Hall at a time of federal largesse" that paid for big construction projects. The current mayor presided during an era of globalization and technological change; he oversaw City Hall during a real estate boom and is leaving as its bust continues along. A big question for Chicago's next mayor is how she or he will govern, provide services, and develop the city when the broader context seems intent on austerity.