Mark Small

Cancer bore you? We all face a fiscal cancer that Fed legislation should ban. TIFs - Tax Increment Financing Districts - were created in California in the 1950s to develop urban wastelands. 1/11

TIFs arose from the notion that where free market couldn’t lure development, gov’t bonds could. TIFs are a variation of the old con game of “blue sky”: & the bait works. 2/11

TIFs: line is drawn around an area 2 B developed (“footprint”) Developers’ rosy pictures = huge numbers in property taxes generated by development First monies are supposed to go paying off bonds issued for the subsidies for the developments. 3/11

TIFs are dreams (or hallucinations): why have vacant lots there? Developers will erect mixed development structures, owners will pay property taxes, residents will have jobs and etcetera. 4/11

TIFs (the reality): development occurs where it would occur anyway. In Indianapolis more apartments are built than people who are tenants. Developers bear no risk - & risk is an important part of free market ideology - because, hey, government backs the bonds. 5/11

TIFs, in practice, pass poor areas & like cancer cells kill the body (city services still are needed in TIF districts) in favor of something (“blue sky” painted by developers) that rarely exist: the bluer the “sky” the more (delusional) money. 6/11

TIFs were made illegal in California for a reason. They become too easily abused by developers who take the money and leave the debt of bond repayment to the taxpayers. The bait works, but the taxpayers get stuck by the hook. 7/11