Mar

19

Free the TIF audit

March 19, 2007 | 5 Comments

UPDATE: Heidi reports that Reclaim Democracy will hold a rally at City Hall to demand the release the audit, Wednesday at 9:45 a.m.

Me, My Life, and Infrastructure sums up coverage of the TIF audit currently being held hostage by Mayor Barnes and the good old boys terrified of its damning findings. She thinks it’s subject to the Sunshine Law and has filed an open records request to see a copy of it. You too can make a request, and she shows you how.

While the audit hasn’t been released yet, the TIF Comission’s response to the audit had been leaked. According to the response, the audit says TIF revenue projections have been inflated by $167 million. The TIF Comission responds that the difference is only $86 million. Either way you count it, it seems appareant that overall the city’s TIF projects are losing a lot of money.

Sun-Tribune: TIF revenue projectons inflated by $167 million.

Categories: Business, Politics, blogging


Comments

5 Comments so far

  1. Mark Forsythe on March 19, 2007 10:03 am

    First of all nice work to Business Editor Gene Hanson at the Sun-Tribune for breaking this story.

    I for one am anxious to see the TIF Commission’s entire response. Especially the part about the “new” jobs. “The TIF program has created 19,457 jobs,” the commission said. “These jobs are only the jobs that are created by the employers associated with the development.

    Are these “new” jobs that never existed in the KC Metro area or are they jobs associated with every TIF plan? Does that number include the H&R Block employees? The IRS employees? Those jobs were NOT created. At least not my definition of “created.”

  2. Joe Medley on March 19, 2007 2:10 pm

    All good questions, Mark. I don’t think the TIF law requires the commission to track jobs that already existed because the employer moved from one part of KC to the other. I’ve looked at enough TIF reports to know that the commission certainly doesn’t report them.

    I wish PIEA, DESA, and LCRA had reporting requirements like TIF. I suspect that TIF would be at the bottom of our priority list if they did.

  3. George-KC on March 22, 2007 4:33 pm

    The jobs are either jobs created or retained. H&R Block easily could have joined the flood of companies that have fled to Kansas over the years. Downtown has only lost 100,000 jobs the past 35 years. What’s another 1500 or so for H&R Block? The IRS jobs brought in jobs from all over the metro so there actually was new jobs brought to KCMO in addition to jobs retained.

    William Rockhill Nelson, the EDC is saying that projections were missed by $87 million. There are a lot of factors that go into that because some TIFs are pay as you go versus some are bonded. If a TIF isn’t meeting projections, it’ll eventually expire and the developer won’t get reimbursed in full for the infrastructure that was approved for that TIF.

    The real issue in all this is the TIFs that the city has to subsidize out of the general budget. That’s been about $8.5 million total (or something like that). The good news is that several of the failing TIFs are downtown hotels and with all the new projects downtown (Sprint, Power & Light District, and Convention Center expansion), there’s going to be a lot of new room nights generated so those shortfalls will be reduced if not completely eliminated.

  4. renne on March 25, 2007 9:31 am

    Don’t forget, though, that relocations are bad, too. The IRS used to be in the sixth district. They may have brought in new jobs to KC, but that still left a hole in the south part of town. Sometimes there are ramifications to TIF projects that people don’t think about. I’d like to see an audit of the social implications.

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