What Are The Best Uses of TIF

Sean Ryan at Daily Reporter, one of the state's best reporters at an under-appreciated resource, summarizes the policy questions surrounding the spreading and controversial uses of Tax Increment Financing (TIF).

Without TIF, Pabst Farms would still be the prime agricultural land that the regional planning commission said was its recommended use: now it's a new city, the unofficial Capital of Sprawlville, which is the area west of Brookfield across Waukesha into Jefferson County, south into Walworth County, and north through the remaining scattered elements of the Kettle Moraine.

More on Pabst Farms here, as the mall component is collapsing there for which a new interstate interchange was being rushed to groundbreaking.

Is this what TIF was intended to do?

I think not.