The city’s tax increment financing monies continue to draw attention and heat, as our story about Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s recent audit of processes in the Central West TIF district reveals. The issue that really jumps out at us is the city’s practice of “porting” dollars between contiguous districts.

More than $138 million was ported between districts between 1997 and 2007, mostly for school construction projects. Ferguson’s audit said such practices were carried out in an opaque manner. And the city’s response to that charge — that it now posts expected porting actions online — leaves out the fact that such data only made it to the Web after reporters from the Chicago Reader accessed the information using the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

With hundreds of millions stashed in TIF districts across the city and a gaping budget hole expected for the calendar year 2011 budget, you can bet that TIF issues will increasingly take center stage in neighborhoods and city council.

Though aldermen have started proposing their own ideas for how to use TIF dollars, ultimately a broader debate needs to happen about their existence. About whether it’s appropriate to establish districts in areas clearly not blighted, sidestepping state law. About who decides how such funds are used. And about the impact of TIF districts on other taxing bodies — the schools, the parks, the water district. That debate is overdue.