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 ...