Progress Illinois Discovers Where Property Taxes Go

By Kevin Robinson in News on Nov 11, 2009 6:40PM

If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people that will get stuck with a higher property tax bill this year, one of the things you may be wondering (besides 'why me?') is where that money goes, specifically. Thanks to a new search engine Cook County Clerk David Orr put up the other day, property owners in TIF districts can now see how much of their tax money is going into Mayor Daley's personal slush fund. Progress Illinois took it for a test drive, using Mayor Daley's permanent index number.

For fun, we plugged in Mayor Daley's PIN number (17-22-109-027-0000) and found that a whopping 92 percent of his property taxes were redirected into the Near South TIF last year. By contrast, cash-strapped schools are getting a mere 3.9 percent of the Daley's property tax dollars. This goes to show how much strain the TIF system are putting on those local taxing bodies entrusted to deliver education and other public services.

That's a lot of scratch, especially with the city staring down the barrel of a nearly half billion dollar budget shortfall next year. [via]