Council Illegally Passed TIF Proposals Out Of Committee

Fellow blogger Pat Andrews has uncovered this little gem. It turns out that Councilor Vop Osili's surprise move to pull from the table pending TIF proposals that had sat on the table without action for more than six months was passed out of committee in violation of city law. Section 151-30 of the Revised Municipal Code reads:

If a proposal is tabled by a committee and no action is taken to remove it from the table or to reassign it during a period of six (6) months, the proposal shall be deemed postponed indefinitely and shall be removed from the calendar of pending proposals.


Andrews observes that Proposals 15 and 16 were tabled at the Metropolitan Development and Economic Development Committee's February 6, 2012 meeting. Councilor Osili made a motion to pull the proposals off the table at the committee's August 27 meeting, more than 6 months after the proposals were tabled, after the committee's chairman, Steve Talley, had already gaveled the meeting adjourned because there was no further business on the agenda. Councilor Osili persisted even after Talley left the committee meeting. Councilor Mary Moriarty-Adams then took charge of the meeting and allowed Osili to amend and pass the proposals out of committee. Osili, a minority business contractor, won concessions in the form of an amendment he offered that would directly benefit minority business owners. The downtown mafia has been holding a gun to the council's head since the start of the year to expand the scope of the city's TIF districts to bolster property tax revenues available for the Mayor's slush fund used for payoffs, bribes and kickbacks to the pay-to-play contractors and developers who bankroll the Mayor's and the councilors' campaigns. Those diverted funds, of course, deprive other taxing districts, including schools, of much-needed property tax revenues they need to operate and pay for basic government services. But the downtown mafia is more interested in lining its own pockets with your tax dollars, and it has a majority of the council in its back pocket on any given day to do with your tax dollars what they want done, the public be damned. Let's see if the council abides by the rule of law on this one or does what the downtown mafia orders it to do and passes these illegally-approved proposals.