From the Richmond Palladium-Item:
Last year about this time, when Richmond Mayor Sally Hutton was locking horns over her desired use of $500,000 in Economic Development Income (EDIT) Tax funds as a match to get $2 million in federal highway funds to repair a residential street, some members of Richmond Common Council balked, calling, at the least, for a larger community conversation about the proper use of EDIT funds.
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Council is now being asked to authorize those local public income tax monies for, get this, a private road that would be privately built and owned on private land for the anticipated purpose of attracting private retailers to it.
That’s progress?
In fairness to council members, they have taken serious strides to add tough clawbacks — contractual stipulations and goals regarding, for example, retail jobs created, road ownership and repayment of funds in the event the property is sold.
Clearly clawback protections are in order on behalf of taxpayers any time public dollars are being invested for any kind of private development. And that is what invariably moves these private development discussions into the wider public domain, for public debate and action.
But, in the case at hand, is the clawback discussion actually obscuring the more pressing community conversation so needed here? And that is this: Should local governments open this Pandora’s box of tax dollar investment for retail? And by its vote to fund this east-side private road, where does it then draw the line in the future? At what point is it no longer possible to even imagine such a line?
And since not every private retail development can be so boosted courtesy of taxpayer dollars, what are the criteria for picking the future winners and losers. Can you say crony capitalism? And what becomes of the losers failing to get this government largesse, those who have to make it the old-fashioned way by enduring the vagaries and pitfalls of the market?
Finally, do council members, by their discussion and action to date, believe clawbacks are the bigger issue, bigger even than the precedent for how tax dollars might be used to create often-seasonal, almost always low-paying retail jobs?
We’ll learn more in coming days, and the public should have ample opportunity to be heard on the matter.
http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013307280002
