Why Giving TIF Money to an Anti-Choice Healthcare Provider Matters

Days before hundreds of thousands took to the streets for the 2nd Annual Women’s March, 31 Chicago Aldermen publicly chose to marginalize women when it came to healthcare, voting to hand over $5.6 Million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) money to an anti-choice healthcare provider, Presence Health.

Let’s first tackle the quagmire that is using TIF money in an obscure way, before exploring what the Aldermen were thinking when they rewarded a company millions that casts aside women.

Back in 2012, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel lured Presence Health into moving its headquarters to the Loop with the agreement that it would receive aid from the City, specifically, TIF money. TIF’s are nothing new, but the city has a history of using them in the worst possible way. Originally created by former Mayor Harold Washington in 1984, TIFs were meant to act as a catalyst of economic development in “blighted” neighborhoods. The book Chicago is Not Broke offers a great explanation of how the TIF system works:

“TIF Districts freeze the amount of property taxes that go to units of local government at the amount that exists at the time the district is created (often referred to as the “base” amount). All increased of incremental property tax value inside the TIF district — from whatever source or reason — is collected by the TIF district. The base amount of funds going to local units of government inside the TIF remains frozen for the life of the TIF.”

City officials got it right when they used TIF money in the “underdeveloped” area where it came from. But that district is called the Loop, the city’s economic mecca. Last time I checked, the Loop wasn’t a struggling neighborhood, yet according to the TIF Illumination Project, $850 Million of TIF money has been awarded to Loop, and $55 Million in TIF money was spent on Navy Pier. According to the book, there are 148 active TIFs in Chicago, totaling $426 Million in property taxes in 2014 alone. While Chicago citizens have seen an increase in taxes six times in the last seven years, there’s $1.4 Billion sitting in TIF funds.

In this case study, the city’s deal with Presence Health was based on the stipulation of opening up facilities in communities with limited healthcare choices. According to Crain’s:

“The $5.5 Million in TIF money — which would go toward the $13.3 million Presence spent to build out its downtown office — was meant to “free up capital” for the health system to construct clinics in West Town, Avondale, Calumet Heights and Belmont-Cragin and to operate those facilities for at least 10 years, according to Presence System Vice President of External Affairs Will Snyder.”

This deal is problematic for many reasons. First, ten years is a very short period to promise aid to a community in need of healthcare providers. What happens when ten years passes and Presence Health is back to the table asking for more taxpayer money to continue to provide for those communities? On a more fundamental level, why does Presence health need money from the city to open up these facilities in the first place? Why isn’t the city choosing to subsidize the people’s cost of health care? Moreover, what happens when the people can’t afford to see their doctors in the new healthcare facilities built in their communities? Finally, why hasn’t there been any sort of recognition from the city about why these communities have been ignored for so long?

Presence Health marginalizes women by refusing to provide comprehensive health care to women. Here’s Jen Walsh President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois:

“Presence Health denies women access to birth control, tubal ligation post childbirth, abortion services even in the case of rape and incest, and care relating to preventing and transmitting HIV to its patients.”

Simply, the city of Chicago should not be passing along taxpayer dollars to a medical provider that denies women basic reproductive health care services. Make no mistake, Presence Health policies, taken from the U.S. Conference of Bishop’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, can have life and death consequences for women who seek care in their facilities. Take, Marilyn Katz, who writes in the Chicago Sun-Times about how Presence Health’s policy put her life in danger:

Understanding that only the removal of the IUD would guarantee my continued existence, I requested that the hospital remove it. They refused, saying the removal of the device would create a spontaneous abortion, and as a Catholic institution, they wouldn’t do it.

I was lucky — there were secular hospitals nearby that would save my life.

What I found most alarming was Chicago Aldermens’ willingness to cast aside women’s basic needs for the sake of precedent. Here’s what 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney had to say about this issue:

We must ask ourselves, should we turn a blind eye to the city allocating taxpayer funds to an anti-choice healthcare provider, because they serve some but not all in the community? Said another way, should we accept women in these communities having to find reproductive healthcare somewhere else, because of Presence Health’s religious beliefs? Isn’t it a bit alarming to know that men can get a prescription for ED at the Catholic institution but women can’t get birth control?

In this instance, if the Aldermen were not already aware of the anti-choice policies held by Presence Health, they were aware by the time it came for them to vote. When the TIF proposal made its way to the committee, why didn’t they question if there was a healthcare provider alternative that would provide all healthcare services to women?

For the first ever elected LGBTQ+ Alderman to Chicago City Council, Tunney’s statement is completely tone deaf. Regardless of how long a healthcare provider has been in the city of Chicago, LGBTQ+ elected officials should be the first people to call out institutions that seek to marginalize women and LGBTQ+ community alike, regardless of how old the institution is.

It’s clear Aldermen do not have plausible deniability. They knew they were providing money to an anti-choice hospital, and didn’t bother to seek alternatives. There are many other healthcare providers that ensure women receive comprehensive health care and those in the LGBTQ+ community.

Women’s rights are human rights, and until we start thinking about who we (the city) are giving our money to, we will continue to see institutionalized discrimination.