When I heard that Mayor Lightfoot had teamed up with Samuel Skinner—former White House chief of staff under George H.W. Bush—to produce a study on how to eliminate inequities in Chicago, I raced to the report to find any references to TIFs.
But, alas, there’s only one itty-bitty reference to the tax increment financing program possibly helping fund Black-owned businesses. It’s on page 44, if you want to see it yourself.
Or is it a case of innocent ignorance—as if Lightfoot and Skinner, as wise and well-connected as they may be, had never heard of the program?
But that’s the old me.
Yes, the TIF program is intended to help the poorest of the poor.
An inequity that somehow managed not to get mentioned in Forward Together, even as the report talks about how “Chicago must tackle intergenerational poverty that holds our city back” rather than “expecting the benefits of growth to trickle down.”
