Chicago’s TIF Investment Committee recorded 1,698 decisions on requests for TIF money across its 2019–2024 meetings — 1,515 of them approvals, carrying $4.48 billion of the $4.95 billion asked — and its recorded outcomes contain no denial category at all. The rest carry the file’s three other labels: 102 marked Under Further Review, 59 Referred Back to Department, 22 On Hold. The single largest recorded ask is the Red Line Extension’s $950 million, approved in 2022. A newer file carries the committee’s 2025–2026 request reviews — 185 requests totaling $1.78 billion — with decision dates but no recorded outcomes. Both files are read here at their own boundaries, never summed together.
TIF Investment Committee Decisions + TIF Request Review, Chicago data portal · decisions file last updated January 29, 2025; request file refreshed July 31, 2026; both retrieved August 16, 2026Reading the committee’s ledger
The decisions file records one row per request the committee took up: the project, the department asking, the TIF district asked to fund it, the dollars requested against the total project cost, and the committee’s recorded outcome. Across 1,698 rows the outcomes take exactly four values — Approved, Under Further Review, Referred Back to Department, and On Hold (which the file spells two ways; this page counts both together). One precision note on what that means: the recorded outcome categories contain no denial, and this page reports that as a fact about the file’s categories — whether any request was rejected before reaching a recorded committee decision, the file does not say. An approval here is the committee’s recorded outcome, not a shovel, a contract, or a disbursement.
Who asks, and for what
- CDOT570
- Planning and Development (DPD)533
- Chicago Public Schools193
- Assets, Information & Services165
- Park District88
The askers are overwhelmingly public bodies: the transportation department brought 570 requests, planning 533, the school district 193. By the file’s own improvement types, Public Infrastructure leads with 574 requests, Economic Development follows at 351, Schools at 193 — and Affordable Housing appears on 92. The busiest year in the file is 2020, with 424 decisions; the total project costs behind all 1,698 requests sum to $18.05 billion, of which the TIF asks were $4.95 billion.
Where the biggest asks went
- Red Line Extension$950.0M
- LaSalle Central$685.0M
- Central West$218.5M
- Pilsen Ind Corr(as the file abbreviates it)$211.7M
- Kinzie Industrial Corridor$201.2M
Summed by the district asked to pay, the Red Line Extension TIF leads on a single row: the $950 million CDOT ask approved in 2022 — the same transit district whose lifetime collections our TIF ledger reads from the annual reports. LaSalle Central is second at $685.0 million across its requests, including three separate “LaSalle Reimagined” asks approved in 2023 — $248.5 million between them — and it is also the district our TIF ledger shows with the largest cumulative collections in the annual reports. District names are folded case-insensitively here, because the file spells LaSalle Central two ways; every dollar figure in this table is the file’s own request value.
The 2025–2026 file records requests, not outcomes
The newer request-review file picks up where the decisions file stops: 185 requests with final-decision dates in 2025 and 2026, totaling $1.78 billion, led again by CDOT (62) and planning (60). Every row carries a decision date — and none carries an outcome column, so what the committee decided is not in this file. The two files use different schemas for different eras, and no figure on this page adds them together.
Known limits
These are the committee’s records of requests and recorded outcomes — not budgets, contracts, construction, or money out the door, and our TIF ledger’s reading of the annual reports is the separate, spending-side record. The decisions file’s last recorded update is January 2025, so any 2024-era decisions added since are not here. Requested dollars are as filed by the requesting department; approved dollars are requests whose recorded outcome is Approved, which says nothing about what was eventually spent. The absence of a denial category describes the file’s recorded outcomes, and only that.
- Sources TIF Investment Committee Decisions (nm3d-wkdd, 1,698 rows, last updated January 29, 2025) and TIF Request Review (39jp-wa43, 185 rows, refreshed July 31, 2026), both retrieved August 16, 2026.
- Counting One row is one request taken up. Outcome counts use the file’s exact values, with the two capitalizations of On Hold counted together. Dollar sums are the files’ request and project-cost values; approved dollars sum requests whose recorded outcome is Approved. Funding-district sums fold names case-insensitively and display the file’s most common spelling. The two files are never combined in any figure.
Computed by KCM Desk from records retrieved August 16, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
Related Keep Chicagoland Moving coverage
- How Chicago Works, by the Numbers
- Chicago’s TIF Funds Held $3.05 Billion in the 2024 Reports — More Than Double 2017, in Fewer Districts
- The Chicago TIF Districts That Have Collected the Most Increment, All-Time
- Before the Red Line Extension Opens, the Record: House Medians in Its Three Higher-Volume Areas Have at Least Doubled Since 2019