The Journal Star ran a piece yesterday on tax increment financing (TIF). The article placed strong emphasis on one of the main reasons why I don't like TIF, while virtually ignoring my second reason.
The article's emphasis is on the fact that the use of TIF in Nebraska has been one giant string of lies. TIF is tied to blight, you see, but often blight isn't present where communities want to use TIF. So the government lies. It manufactures blight out of thin air, which it can do thanks to Nebraska's ridiculously broad definition of blight. The result is gleeful dishonesty from government officials. Consider David Landis' admission that he has used TIF where "we could shoot a cannon off and not be able to find blight."
The lying is bad enough, but that's not what worries me most. I wish the Journal Star would have spent more time focusing on all of the bad things that can come out of a blight designation. Things like the government's ability to condemn property and evict property owners. Locally we are fortunate to have not seen too much abuse of that power, though we have come close a couple times in the past few years. (Two failed projects on Q Street come to mind.)
I'm certainly not inherently opposed to the use of "economic development tools" in the broad sense, nor do I necessarily oppose TIF. What I don't like is the fact that the government very often has to abuse the truth in order to use TIF -- one of very few tools available -- and that thanks to phantom blight designations the government gets power over property owners it really oughtn't have.
Is there a state Senator out there who is willing to reign in municipalities' abuse of TIF, while giving them new economic development tools that are fair to taxpayers and successful for communities?
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You know, you’ve got kind of a knack for making this stuff readable. I’d bet that most people that comment here have a reasonable understanding of what TIF is, but not most. You should write a community column about it.
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