Blighting perfectly good property so a developer can get money. My God, we've got to do something in this state about fraud!
Blighting perfectly good property so a developer can get money.
According to the Colorado Politics article linked first below, an urban renewal authority is looking to blight a decent sized chunk of downtown to offer a tax break to a developer so he can build him a high rise.
I mean, you can dress it up with fancy words like urban renewal and tax increment financing, but the upshot is someone else pays less taxes, others make up the shortfall, so that a developer will build something where the city thinks they want it.
I covered this in more detail in an earlier newsletter (see the second link below), but the outline of the process is something like this:
1. A certain section of the Springs received approval to seek status as an urban renewal district. This is what I mean when I say it was blighted.
**As a quick aside, if you see the picture heading this post, you will see actual urban blight from New Jersey on the left alongside the picture from the Colorado Politics article on the right showing the "blight" in the Springs downtown. I want you to put that with a quote from that same article: "El Paso County property tax records show that one of the homes slated for demolition sold for $1 million in 2021."
2. Having an urban renewal authority and having said authority declare some land blighted frees up tax incentives and other things to make it easier for a developer to come in and build.
3. If they decide to use Tax Increment Financing (TIF), as was hinted at in the article, then it will be taxpayers in that area that give money to the developer so he can build his tower. Put all the acronyms in there you want (and here I again refer you to my earlier newsletter linked below), but the plain truth is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. You the taxpayer get money taken from you and given to a developer.
It seems as though the city council is interested in moving ahead with the project despite a few coming to the meeting to push back on the project and TIF.
I don't get the sense, however, that things are completely finalized yet. If you live in the area and have some concerns, start writing and talking to the city council.
Now's the time.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/local-government/plans-for-skyscraper-in-downtown-colorado-springs-rely-on-blight-designation/article_c8f7544c-338a-5691-9ce7-70255c308089.html#google_vignette
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/cfoics-update-due-to-new-laws-to?utm_source=publication-search
My God, we've got to do something in this state about fraud!
During COVID, due to freeing up government dollars and lots more people on the dole, there was a huge surge in unemployment fraud.**
This was, as you can read in the first link below, a costly decision to make. It doesn't stop there either.
The response to this problem, along with the unmitigated clusterf@@k that Governor Polis' Department of Labor and Employment has turned out to be, has meant that a substantial number of people with legitimate claims have been left out without benefits, for years. See, for example, link 2 below.
And let's not get started on how the problems are affecting employers (a subject I've written about multiple times in the past).
Well, we now have yet more fraud that's causing our state problems. Back in 2022, Polis touted that new business filings with the state would only cost $1. This was sold as a way to encourage new economic activity, especially for small businesses.
It seems (see the third link below), that it has also meant lots of fraud. Bad enough on its own, of course, but this fraud is also making economic health measurements and forecasts have less meaning.
Fraud is the fault of the fraudsters. We could also reasonably argue the cost vs. benefits of expanding unemployment or using state money to pay the remaining $19 if we drop business filling fees to $1.
But I'll be damned if we could argue that our state is doing a good job at detecting and/or stopping fraud. Not really even sneaky fraud either: in the Post article linked third below one dude set up 15,000-odd LLC's at the same Northglenn address.
Yet one more thing to remember or remind people about when they start arguing that we should be letting the government have more and more of a role in our lives.
**Just to reiterate: no choice is without a consequence.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/5000-legitimate-colorado-unemployment-claimants-fraud-holds/
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/10/15/colorado-business-filings-fraud-economic-data/