THIS is Real Reporting

Too bad the only guy doing it is working for a paper that has limited readership and gives itself away for free:

• It was created more than two decades ago, to great fanfare, to try to lift what was then a struggling downtown, and it quickly amassed millions of dollars for Mayor Daley and other elected officials to play with. In 2008, at the legally mandated end of its 24-year life, the city spent about $365.5 million from the Central Loop TIF's coffers—more than the city has ever spent in a single year from any TIF fund, and more than the total expenditures from the TIF over the previous three years combined. For a little perspective, that's the equivalent of about 70 percent of the city's predicted budget shortfall for 2010.

  The process for phasing out a TIF is fairly straightforward, at least according to state law. The city can either spend all the money before it's closed or hand over what it didn't spend to the schools, parks, county, and other taxing bodies.

  Well, in early July, when the city finally got around to releasing the 2008 reports on its 160 TIF districts, we found out which option the mayor went with. I'll give you a hint: the schoolkids didn't win.

Ben Joravsky names names and companies where hundreds of million of dollars disappeared to the detriment of Chicago neighborhoods, schools and communities. It also gives lie to much of Shortshanks's pleading poverty and needing to lay off hundreds of workers.

Go read the entire article.