"Most years, the U.S. government allocates close to $1.5 billion in shipping fees into a harbor maintenance fund, but spends less than $800 million on dredging, Hansen said.
"All they're dredging are the commercial ports," he said. "I think they're spending that money on other things."
Criticism
TIF districts have attracted much criticism. Some question whether TIF districts actually serve their resident populations. An organization called Municipal Officials for Redevelopment Reform (MORR) holds regular conferences on redevelopment abuse.[6]
Here are further claims made by TIF opponents:
- The process arguably leads to favoritism for politically connected developers, implementing lawyers, economic development officials and others involved in the process
- Normal inflationary increases in property values can be captured with districts in poorly written TIFs, representing money that would have gone to the public coffers even without the financed improvements.
- Districts can sometimes be drawn too large and capture value that would have been increased anyway for unrelated reasons.
- Approval of districts can sometimes capture one entity's future taxes without its official input, i.e. a school districts taxes will be frozen on action of a city.
- Capturing the full tax increment and directing it to repay the development bonds ignores the fact that the incremental increase in property value likely requires an increase in the provision of public services, which will now have to be funded from elsewhere (often from subsidies from less economically thriving areas). For example, the use of tax increment financing to create a large residential development means that public services from schools to public safety will need to be expanded, yet if the full tax increment is captured to repay the development bonds, other money will have to be used.[9]
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