By Larry Riley in the Muncie Star-Press:
Once upon a time communities used “economic development income tax” revenues on expenses that spurred the likelihood of actual pecuniary growth.
New roads, for example. “Shell” buildings as inducements for companies to buy the ready-made structure and start up business quickly. Sewer and water lines to prospective industrial parks.
Over time, cities used more and more outlandish reasoning to connect EDIT expenditures to economic development.
To eliminate impropriety, legislators amended the state’s EDIT law to allow funds to be spent “for any lawful purpose for which money in any of its other funds may be used.”
So now EDIT taxes are just like any taxes, although communities are certainly allowed to use the money for what is hoped to be actual economic development.
We saw an example of each type of EDIT expenditure by Delaware County officials Monday, though the one that actually would be considered “economic development” was only a “commitment” if another avenue of economic development, namely tax increment financing revenues, fell short.
Come to think of it, the other also started out only as a commitment, but that was about $800,000 ago.
The county Economic Development Income Tax Board convened to start the process of promising EDIT money as a “backup” to TIF money for a new, half-mile road from Ind. 67/28 west of Albany north to Bell Aquaculture, a 5-year-old fish farm specializing in yellow perch.
The operation already is in its own TIF district and the $1 million stretch of road — $1.2 million when legal and other consulting fees are thrown in — is part of a bond issued by the Delaware County Redevelopment Commission.
But in case TIF money is insufficient, the county had promised to pay $95,000 over four years from EDIT funds. That pledge was based, however, on what the board’s attorney called, in the type of understatement seemingly too common around here, a “slight miscommunication.”
What’s actually needed is a commitment of $95,000 every year for at least four years.
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See the full article here:
http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013308210020
