Roadblocks for Emanuel’s Police Funding Plan

Over the weekend Rahm Emanuel became the latest local politician to propose tapping funds from the city’s tax increment financing districts to help pay for city services.

Emanuel said that if he is elected mayor he would use $25 million in TIF money to pay for 250 new officers that could be dispatched around the city as needed. This, he said, would let the city avoid making the “false choice” of deciding whether to move police districts away from some neighborhoods and into others with more pressing crime problems.

“For too long we’ve had a debate about how to take police out of one community and put police in another community,” Emanuel was quoted as saying.

It’s the sort of declaration every smart mayoral candidate would love to make. Faced with thinning ranks and a shortage of money to hire more officers, police Superintendent Jody Weis recently promised to implement a “resource reallocation” plan that would shift more police to high-crime areas by the end of 2010. The idea has prompted amens from aldermen on the South and West Sides where crime is highest and fierce opposition from North and Northwest Siders who are worried that they’ll lose police—though Weis has yet to provide any details to the City Council.

TIF districts are areas that city officials deem “blighted” and in need of economic development. State law then allows the city to siphon any increase in tax revenues from the districts into special accounts that the mayor controls, with limited oversight from the City Council.

Over the years Mayor Richard M. Daley has used TIF money to pay for just about any improvement or economic development initiative he sees fit: sidewalk repairs, flower bed street medians, relocating homeless shelters, and subsidies for companies that agree to move or keep jobs in Chicago.

But as times have gotten tough in the last few years, other politicians have fixed their eyes on the TIF money. A year ago 38th Ward Alderman Tom Allen called for suspending the TIF program and using the available money to plug a half-billion-dollar hole in the budget. His proposal was ignored at the time, but this year the city’s budget hole was even larger. Mayor Daley used nearly $39 million in TIF money to balance the 2011 budget, which was approved last week by the City Council.

Emanuel’s plan is short on specifics. “Rahm will add 250 police officers who focus on crime in and around TIF areas,” says a fact sheet distributed by his campaign in response to questions. “Deployment of police officers in these new squads will be determined based on the type and level of violent crime as well as the geographic boundaries of the TIF area. The plan, which costs about $25 million, a small slice of the approximately $900 million in available TIF funds, will create the safer neighborhood environments required for residents to rebuild their communities, setting the foundation for new economic development and job growth.”

There are problems with even this general description of the proposal.

For starters, not all of the roughly $900 million in “available funds” is available for the areas with the highest crime. Under state law, the city is required to spend TIF money in the area where it was generated (or, in some cases, in a nearby area). And currently most TIF funds are designated for use in downtown districts, according to a balance sheet on the city’s website.

For example, by the end of 2010 more than $52 million will be left in the coffers of the Canal/Congress district just west of the Loop. Another $36 million will be available for the LaSalle/Central district, in the western part of the Loop. The 63rd and Ashland district, in a high-crime part of Englewood, generates far fewer tax revenues. At the end of 2010 it will have no money available.

Some districts in depressed areas have a little more cash in the bank—such as the Roseland and Michigan district on the far South Side, with about $934,000 left at the end of 2010. But it won’t have much free to hire officers at roughly $100,000 apiece each year. Much of the Roseland district funds are budgeted for a new shopping plaza that’s been in the works for years.

Under state law TIF funds can be used for a wide range of things, including child care for the employees of some businesses in TIF districts. But they are not supposed to be used for general operating expenses. Mayor Daley got around the law this year by declaring some TIF funds a “surplus” and returning them to the taxing bodies which would have collected them if the TIF program weren’t in place—the Chicago Public Schools, the county, and others. The city’s share was less than a quarter of the total.

If he’s elected, Emanuel could do the same thing—where there’s a will, there’s a way, particularly if you’re the mayor—but that would be tantamount to admitting the TIF program is gobbling up desperately needed tax money in the name of economic development that may or may not come along for years.

Or, to put it another way: It’s tantamount to admitting that perhaps the city can’t afford to give $14 million in subsidies to CNA, $24 million to MillerCoors, or $31 million to UAL—as it has in the past few years—when it doesn’t have the money to hire the police it needs.