Research

Here is the presentation Tom Tresser gave at the February 12 TIF Town Meeting on the 12 TIFs in the 27th Ward (audio = 23 minutes). The meeting was held at the fabulous...

Here is the presentation plus audio that reveals what we found out about the 12 TIFs inside the 27th Ward (1 hour, 25 min) CivicLab TIF Illumination Workshop – January 29, 2013 from...

The sober analysts at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy issued a report in 2012 entitled “Rethinking Property Tax Incentives for Business.” They don’t waste any time cutting to the chase. “The use...

Our first TIF Illumination for TIFs outside the city of Chicago is being conducted for the ten TIFs inside the Village of Franklin Park. Our research partner for this Illumination is Open Local...

Is it the Return of the Blob? Is a spreading epidemic? Is the map to secret treasure? Could it be all three? It’s the map of Chicago’s 163 Tax Increment Finance Districts. The...

The great Ben Joravsky, who has forgotten more about TIFs than most will recall, has written about the CivicLab and our TIF Illumination Project. He keeps talking about Tom Tresser, but the No...

There are 1,220 TIFs in Illinois inside of 455 municipalities. In 2010 they extracted $1.12 BILLION in property taxes from taxpayers across the state. What do we know, collectively, about all this economic...