Good stuff on the city and state budget front today:
* At Gapers Block, Ramsin Cannon looks at TIFs and the effectiveness of the state’s FOI laws.
* At Progress Illinois, Josh Kalven reports on a new study about “Mayor Daley’s House of Cards,” i.e. the city’s dependence on revenues from asset privatization, which will steeply decline in 2010: “The reality is that Daley largely plugged the budget shortfall by way of revenue from the leases of the city’s Skyway and parking meters. And those funds are not going to be nearly as plentiful come 2010.”
* “Daley to taxpayers: Increase is an ‘abatement'”. Fran Spielman thwacks the mayor’s statement about a proposed property tax hike to pay for CPS: “Over the last two years alone, Daley has raised taxes, fines and fees by a whopping $329 million, including an $83.4 million property tax increase, the largest property tax increase in Chicago history.”
* Athenae vents frustrations about “Illinois’ vicious circle” of tax policy and suburban flight, and points towards a 2006 Dawn Clark Netsch interview about the tax-swap proposal that cost her the governorship to Jim Edgar.