Three Recommended Reforms For Tax Increment Financing (TIF)

Corporate Welfare |
By David Stokes | Read Time 1 minute

As Missouri’s General Assembly gets underway in 2014, they should move to reform Tax Increment Financing (TIF). David Stokes suggests three reforms that the legislature should enact this session:

  1. Prohibit elected city officials from overriding county TIF commissions
  2. Focus TIF subsidies on returning property to greenfield status
  3. Prohibit TIFs from being awarded in floodplains statewide

 

About the Author

David Stokes is a St. Louis native and a graduate of Saint Louis University High School and Fairfield (Conn.) University. He spent six years as a political aide at the St. Louis County Council before joining the Show-Me Institute in 2007. Stokes was a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute from 2007 to 2016. From 2016 through 2020 he was Executive Director of Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, where he led efforts to oppose harmful floodplain developments done with abusive tax subsidies. Stokes rejoined the Institute in early 2021 as the Director of Municipal Policy. He is a past president of the University City Library Board. He served on the St. Louis County 2010 Council Redistricting Commission and was the 2012 representative to the Electoral College from Missouri’s First Congressional District. He lives in University City with his wife and their three children.

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