Chicago's TIF sunshine falls short
From Sunshine Review
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August 5, 2009 Chicago City Council unanimously passed a TIF sunshine ordinance on April 22 that set a deadline of July 30 for creating a single online database of TIF documents and July 31 brought the launch of that site.[1]
[edit] New site
When the Department of Community Development (DCD) spokesperson Susan Massel said, "We believe we've done a good job of meeting the requirements of the ordinance."
The DCD website provides a series of PDF documents in the TIF section that must be downloaded in order to be searched.
The "TIF District Overviews" provides a set of links to seven regions: North, Northwest, West, Southwest, South, Far South, and Central. The "TIF Annual Reports" link provides only six groupings of TIF districts: Central Area, North Side, Northwest Side, South Side, Southwest Side, West Side. Five new TIF districts, all designated in 2009, are not provided on the site, making it difficult to have an accurate count of TIF districts.
Comparing the site to the original legislation, the site does not fulfill the requirements because only the most recent annual reports for TIFs designated after July 30, 2004 are published when the ordinance called for all to be published. Also, many of the links are broken in addition to the five missing TIFs passed in 2009.
Massel called the website "a work in progress," though the deadline has passed.[1]
[edit] External links
[edit] References
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