Tiff Over Madison TIF Could Inform TIF Tussle in Tosa

There's a high-profile battle in Madison over whether to extend Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) subsidies to a hotel development.

Through TIF, a municipality typically loans money to a developer for a portion of the bottom line and the loan is repaid with the additional taxes - - the increment - - collected on the development.

Milwaukee has used TIF extensively, as have other Wisconsin municipalities.

Now there's also a proposal in Wauwatosa to extend TIF assistance to UWM's planned public/private engineering complex on the County Grounds to pay for streets and other amenities; a private-sector Innovation Center in the project would generate property taxes.

Though not offering a perfect, 1:1 comparison, the proposals in Madison and Wauwatosa raise similar issues: appropriate use of a state-approved financing tool aimed principally at addressing blight, amount of taxes recovered, and their loss to all taxing districts, like the school system, until the project is closed out.

Wauwatosa's Plan Commission takes up the plan there next week; several residents have asked me about TIFs, and I think the Madison hotel issue offers a useful case study.

[Update: at the suggestion of a commenter, I am adding a link about how the Pabst Farms TIF is struggling along in Oconomowoc. Yes, they used a TIF to build out farmland.]