One year ago today, Cook County Clerk David Orr announced plans to print TIF revenue diversions on county property tax bills. We previously blogged about this effort, eagerly awaiting this TIF transparency enhancement.

Wait no longer! The Cook County Clerk’s office made good on its promise of taxpayer transparency and has issued property tax bills containing information about TIF for each individual property owner. For that we congratulate them on bringing needed sunlight to TIF in Chicago and other municipalities in Cook County.

We hope jurisdictions across the country take notice of Cook County, Illinois. Taxpayers have a right to know how their taxes get spent. With so much property tax revenue in Chicago never ending up in the city’s general revenue fund, printing TIF costs on tax bills enables citizens to make better judgements about the value of TIF projects and how their taxes get spent. We applaud such efforts.

For more Good Jobs First research on TIF revenue diversions in Chicago, see our 2014 report.

For more about how Cook County printed TIF on property tax bills, see the County Clerk’s website and watch the Youtube Video below:

This entry was posted on July 11, 2014 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Illinois, Property Taxes, Subsidies, Tax Increment Financing, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.