Planning commissioner gets an earful about Lightfoot’s plan to create second transit TIF to bankroll Red Line South extension

A top mayoral aide got an earful on Friday about Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s controversial plan to create a new transit tax increment financing district to bankroll $950 million of the $3.6 billion cost of extending the CTA’s Red Line from 95^th Street to 130^th.

The TIF district would cover a half mile on either side of the Red Line, from Madison Street to Pershing Road, and use property tax growth over the next 35 years to cover 26% of the 5.6-mile extension and its four new CTA stations.

Lightfoot is pushing for a final City Council vote on her financing plan before Dec. 31 to meet the requirement for federal matching funds.

But it could be a rough ride, judging from the earful Planning and Development Commissioner Maurice Cox got about the project while testifying at a City Council budget hearing.

Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) was the most strident of the critics.

And his beef was not only about the fact his 42^nd Ward is one of at least five wards whose property tax growth or “increment” over the next few decades would be siphoned away to bankroll the Red Line south extension miles away.

“We’re looking to extend a system that is failing. Certainly, folks on the South Side deserve access to the Red Line. But rewarding poor stewardship with a billion-dollar investment is difficult to rationalize,” Reilly said.

“The system is unsafe. There is crime occurring on Red Line trains at all hours of the day. Family Services is just now … engaging with members of our homeless population to offer services. They’ve been ignored on these trains for years now. God bless the folks on the South Side. I’m not sure they’re gonna want to get on that new train stop where we’re at now.”

Reilly said CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. “needs to be held to account” by a City Council he has repeatedly ignored.

“President Carter needs ... to explain what is the plan for the CTA? Especially for the Red Line, especially if we’re looking to expand it. Beyond that, a number of us are concerned about how much money we’re using from TIF rather than federal funds or state funds,” Reilly said.

He warned Cox, “You should not be counting those chickens before they hatch. There’s a lot of explaining to do on CTA’s part before we can go ahead with that initiative.”

Cox replied, “I have heard you loud and clear about the need for the president of the CTA to advocate for it — not just departments and the administration. A series of informational sessions and briefings sessions are in order.

“I’ll see what I can do to make sure that aldermen are not just receiving this TIF designation at the Council chambers but there is substantial pre-briefing that goes into that,” Cox said.

Budget Chair Pat Dowell (3^rd) represents another one of the handful of wards whose TIF funds would be siphoned away.

She, too, wants a “discussion that looks comprehensively at CTA and what they want to do as we are trying to find $950 million and more to help do the Red Line extension.”

Finance Committee Chair Scott Waguespack (32^nd) asked Cox what specifically he planned to do to get Carter to “listen to the City Council if we’re gonna dole out, potentially $1 billion.”

“What are we gonna get out of this?” Waguespack said.

Cox said he “understands your concern” about “greater coordination between City Council, the administration and the CTA.”

But, he said, “I hope we all appreciate what it means to have the Red Line extend to the farthest southern tip of our city.”

In 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel convinced the City Council to create Chicago’s first mass transit TIF on the North Side in a race to nail down $1.1 billion in federal funds for the Red Line Modernization project before then-President Barack Obama left office.

Retiring Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) noted that at the time there was no state capital plan. That’s not the case today.

“Why isn’t the state putting money into the south extension?” Tunney said.

He added, “There was plenty of property tax increment that was created in this so-called flush fund for the north. That might be a problem on the South Side in terms of where this is gonna come from.”