Milwaukee Biz Blog: Protect TIF, promote development in Wisconsin

Governor`s budget proposal would reduce municipalities` ability to use economic development tool

On a national level, politicians can’t seem to hammer out a deal on anything right now. Divided government is making it difficult to accomplish even the things that everyone agrees needs to be done, like funding projects to fix the country’s crumbling infrastructure...

...TIF fills a specific need. For example, it can be used only for development projects that officials wouldn’t be able to make happen without such financing. That’s called the “but-for” test...

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Ken Notes: Good read and good points. I would add that we really need to recreate the TIF program from scratch because it is no longer used as it was intended and has been modified and adjusted a number of times to prevent communities from defaulting on commitments in their existing TID`s. It is a mess! Start over with some simple parameters - a fixed maximum investment, a required development agreement, change the "but for" clause to "we really want this", allow communities to jointly create districts and/or projects.