In the article, Fisher brings up an excellent point - If you want to build a school, you must put it to a vote and get 60% of voters to support funding the project. Fisher notes that "As soon as [something] becomes a TIF project, that voting requirement disappears. It's automatically exempt from a voter referendum."
He's right. To create a TIF district, all it generally takes is a majority vote of a City Council to pass. Fisher also makes a good point about giving tax breaks to struggling shopping malls trying to keep up with newer competitors:
"If you think about why a mall gets empty in the first place it's because the private market has moved onto another location, typically. There's this succession of malls, the older ones replaced by newer, bigger ones farther out on the periphery. If the city is going to do something I think they have to ask what the market forces would do by themselves and why there is a role for this city or what the role for the city properly is in this kind of a situation."Exactly. Why subsidize something that is failing? If the general public won't support it, why should a city try to prop it up?
Certainly an argument can be made in favor of using TIFs to stimulate a local economy; unfortunately though, TIFs seem to have become the rule rather than the exception. When you overuse TIFs, you run into a situation that the City of LeClaire ran into recently, when they had to raise taxes to pay for road repairs because of budget shortages. If you are proposing to start a new business, you might as well ask for a TIF, because the odds are pretty good you are going to get it. I can't blame those who accept TIF money either, who turns down "free" money if it's handed to them?
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