TIF financing okay, court rules

Big news out of Tallahassee this morning:

• TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court now says that voter approval isn't needed for billions of dollars in roads, buildings and other local public works projects across the state. The justices on Thursday reversed a decision they made last year to require local referendums on redevelopment bond sales backed by property taxes. After a rehearing, the justices reverted to a legal precedent they set 27 years earlier by not requiring voter approval for tax increment financing.

What does this mean for a new ballpark? Well, it potentially gives the city and county a new funding mechanism, tax increment financing, that would not require a referendum. It likely will only come into play if a ballpark is envisioned for downtown. In Miami, the court's ruling essentially paves the way for the Marlins new ballpark.

Back in November, the Times estimated that the redevelopment of Tropicana Field could generate almost $150-million in TIF dollars for a downtown ballpark.

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Comments

[Thomas]

Wonderful, now that the public is wise to the stadium scam - eliminate them from the process.

Long live corruption and back room deals!

[Scaramouche]

So Aaron, what are you telling us? That the Borg are here, squatting in the chambers of the legislature and perched on the benches of our courts and infiltrating the city and county councils and smirking around in the Mayor's office, and that RESISTANCE IS FUTILE? Is a new stadium at taxpayer expense (via one skulking trick or another) INEVITABLE, for the pleasure of the "rich" who can afford to go there to be seen, worth the further mortgaging of us "poor" folks' future, with a "mortgage" that won't benefit, ever, from a a bailout by "the government," since WE are the pocketbook that's already being tapped to fund all the other bailouts that mortgage our childrens' futures so that folks like the Rays ownership, whose fiscal lives have been made risk-free by their access to those who can pull the fast ones like TIF and determinations of "public necessity"?

Oh, I forgot -- "It is the way it is."

Anyone remember what happened in 1789?

[Scaramouche]

So the idea of TIF is that "the guv'mint" gives "the developer," IN ADVANCE, current public funds to somehow be repaid out of tax dollars that have not been collected yet (and may never be) based on a crystal-ball view of how much additional tax revenue the improvements that present redirection of public funds to developers might create in the future.

And just a very cursory look at how TIF actually works turns up these little observations about the "perpetual motion machine" that developers came up with to once again screw money out of the public:

1) Although generally sold to legislatures as a tool to redevelop blighted areas, some districts are drawn up where development would happen anyway such as prime areas at the edges of cities. California has had to pass legislation designed to curb this abuse. [Think that will happen HERE in Florida? Think again?]
2) the designation as blighted can allow governmental condemnation of property through eminent domain. The famous KELO Supreme Court case, where homes were condemned for a private development was about actions within a TIF district.
3) normal inflationary increases in property values are captured with districts. Money that would have gone to the public coffers even without the financed improvements.
4) districts are drawn too large, capturing value, again, that would have been increased anyway.
5) THE PROCESS LEADS TO FAVORITISM FOR POLITICALLY CONNECTED DEVELOPERS, LAWYERS, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTORS AND OTHER IMPLEMENTERS.
6) FUNDING OFTEN GOES TOWARD WHAT HAVE BEEN TRADITIONALLY PRIVATE IMPROVEMENTS. IMPROVEMENTS THAT DEVELOPERS PROFIT FROM. WHEN THE PUBLIC "INVESTS" IN THESE IMPROVEMENTS IT IS THE DEVELOPERS THAT STILL RECEIVE THE RETURN.
7) approval of districts can sometimes capture one entities taxes without its official input, i.e. a school districts taxes will be frozen on action of a city.
[emphasis most definitely added].

Now THERE's a fine kettle of fish. Dead, rotting, stinking fish, that is.

[CARP]

Just vote all the in's out.