Hoffman, IFF Oppose Urban Renewal

After years of complaints about the tax diversion scheme known as “urban renewal,” it’s good to see state lawmakers spending the summer studying the issue. The Legislature’s urban renewal interim committee met last Monday and heard about some of the problems with the program that redirects taxpayer dollars away from taxing districts to be spent with very little accountability. Urban renewal is a clever scheme. It allows for the government to fictionalize property values inside the urban renewal district. When a piece of property is developed or improved, the local taxing districts are told to pretend the property is still undeveloped; they’ll still have to provide services to the developed property, but without the benefit of the increased property valuation. Only the urban renewal district gets to consider the property as developed for taxation purposes. That difference—between the value of the property as it was and as it is—is where urban renewal squeezes money out of taxpayers. That taxpayer money is often controlled by unelected and unaccountable urban renewal boards/ Wayne Hoffman , Idaho Freedom Foundation. More here .

DFO: I couldn’t disagree with Hoffman more. Urban renewal has led to the transformation of the Coeur d’Alene waterfront, which has increased Lake City’s quality of life and will lead to a windfall of tax dollars when the districts sunset in a few years. Thoughts?