As a downtown resident of St. Albans, I welcome today’s announcement that TIF districts will be subject to increased oversight by the Auditor’s office.

The City of St. Albans recently nabbed a coveted TIF designation, which will aid in ongoing downtown revitalization efforts.  Those efforts, it is hoped, will offset the impact of big box retail development on the City’s perimeter.

Optimism is running high in my neighborhood, even as massive sewer and sidewalk projects disrupt foot traffic on Main St.

St. Albans voters have given a ringing endorsement to the City’s early plans for TIF-enabled improvements and have had little patience with those who would hamstring those efforts.

TIF, “Tax Increment Financing,” is a powerful tool made available by the Legislature to a limited number of municipalites.  It involves temporary redirection of tax dollars that normally would go to the state.

Those tax dollars go instead into public projects intended to grow the TIF holder’s tax base. The idea is that this ultimately benefits both the municipality and the state…but TIF fever has been known to carry-away other administrations, who lost sight of their long-term obligations as they pursued exciting short-term goals.  

Winooski’s 1.5-million shortfall springs most readily to mind.

Senate bill 37, passed at the end of the 2013 session, reforms the process and specifically establishes penalties for failure to comply.

It also ends the practice of awarding new TIF districts to other municipalities.  Whether that provision will be revisited once the impact of reforms on existing TIF districts can be assessed, remains to be seen.

Vermont Auditor Doug Hoffer is determined to provide the ongoing oversight that has previously been lacking with regard to TIF management, so that the benefitting municipalities don’t get in over their heads.

According to Hoffer, “S. 37 establishes much needed clarity in the statutes, provides a mechanism for resolving future disputes, and requires payments by the towns for monies mistakenly withheld from the Education Fund.” It also establishes a process for future performance audits of TIF’s by the Auditor’s office.

Poised near the beginning of its own TIF “boom,” St. Albans will certainly benefit from the guidance offered by S. 37 and the certain knowledge that the Auditor’s office will be expecting accountability.